Right by Her Side (5 page)

“Hello, Ray.” He hated when she called him that. His given name was Rayburn and it was his preference. He'd always said Ray was a guy who sprawled on the couch and drank beer.

Well, better a stay-at-home beer-drinker than a cheating swiller of chardonnay who spent all his spare time sharing someone else's bed.

“Is everything okay, Rebecca?” At the new voice, they all looked over. There was Trent, lugging a bucket of water and an old straw broom.

Oh, no.
Rebecca gave an inward moan. The last thing she wanted was for Eisenhower's daddy to meet Ray. That would only clinch the bad impression she'd made on Trent today. What kind of woman would ever have married such a jerk?

As if he had to confirm that fact, Ray opened his mouth. “Is this your new boyfriend, Becca?” His gaze focused on the bucket and the broom, and he smiled, except on Ray it looked like a sneer. “You dating the janitor now?”

 

Trent had been taking himself to task all the way to Eddie and back. Thinking with the brain below his belt instead of the one between his ears had led him to teasing and flirting with Rebecca. But she didn't need that. She'd said she didn't need or want anything from him.

He certainly didn't need to wind their accidental entanglement any tighter.

But those thoughts evaporated when he took in the man and woman talking with Rebecca. Trent didn't like that stiff expression on her face, an expression that turned even stiffer when the other man said something Trent didn't catch. Something about “the janitor.”

He strode closer, then stepped over the short front wall of their booth. “Excuse me?” he said, meeting the other man's gaze. “Were you talking to me?”

The guy's eyes slid toward Rebecca. “I was asking about Becca's love life.” A faint smile looked nasty on his too-pretty face.

“My love life's none of your business, Ray,” Rebecca replied. She glanced over at Trent, then released a tiny sigh. “This is my ex-husband, Rayburn Holley, and his friend, Constance Blake. Ray, Constance, this is Trent Crosby.”

“
Doctor
Rayburn Holley,” the man said. His gaze traveled to the bucket and broom Trent carried. “I'd shake hands but I'm on duty in a few minutes. So you're making time with my little Becca, huh?”

Aaah.
Now if he put love life and janitor together, it was clear that Dr. Ray had been trying to put his ex-wife down. Trent smiled. “We're making something, all right, Ray.” He turned to the man's companion. “Hey there, Constance. Did your brother tell you I kicked his ass on the tennis court last week?”

If smiles could kill, Constance's would have flash-frozen him on the spot. His mother and his ex-wife had been expert at that kind of smile and he was expert at deflecting it.

He grinned back. “What's the matter, Con? Toothache?”

“There's not a thing wrong with me, Trent.”

“Nothing that a little warm blood wouldn't help,” he murmured for Rebecca's ears only and was gratified to hear her little snort of choked-off laughter. Then he raised his voice. “My mistake. I thought maybe that's why you had an appointment with Dr. Ray here.”

“I'm a
dermatologist,
not a dentist.” The doctor shot a glance at his companion. “You know this man, Constance?”

She gave him a nudge with her elbow. “He's Trent Crosby, Rayburn. Of Crosby Systems?”

Dr. Ray blinked. The he looked from Rebecca to Trent. From Trent to Rebecca. “Well.” He shook his head. “Well, well.”

Rebecca crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes,
well,
let's not keep you, Ray. I'm sure your patients need you more than we do.”

“I don't—” Ray blinked again. “So there is a ‘we,' Rebecca? You and
Trent Crosby?
”

The embarrassed flush on Rebecca's face was all the impetus Trent needed. He pasted on his best man-to-man smile. “What else would get me out of the office or off the golf course on a Saturday morning but a beautiful woman, right, Ray? A beautiful,
desirable
woman.” His arm looped around Rebecca's neck to draw her close. He pressed his mouth against hers in a casual kiss.

At the light contact, a fire flared. Trent jerked away
from it, staring into Rebecca's equally startled eyes. It took an effort to break her gaze and meet Dr. Ray's. “And, uh, thanks, by the way.”

“For what?” The other man didn't look happy.

Trent hugged Rebecca closer. He didn't dare kiss her again. “For this woman, of course. Your loss is my gain.”

It sent the supercilious bastard on his way, trailed by the Ice Queen who deserved him. Trent kept his arm around Rebecca until the other couple was out of sight.

That was when her shoulders slumped and she slid away from his embrace. “You didn't need to do that.”

“What?” He couldn't help smiling at Rebecca, because Dr. SOB was out of her life and because she looked so damn cute with cotton candy in her hair.

“Pretend for Ray.”

Trent shrugged. “He was trying to do a number on you.”

“I know.” She sighed. “I know, and I still can't help falling for it. After I caught him cheating, it was as if he blamed me for his own failings.”

“Spouses are pigs.”

She laughed, as he'd hoped she would. Then she sobered. “Sometimes I feel bad about being so pessimistic about love. Then again, sometimes I feel smug.”

“I only feel smart.”

She laughed again. “At least you're honest. Ray wasn't.”

“Neither was my ex-wife.”

“I suppose that means we have more in common than I would ever have suspected,” Rebecca replied.

“Yeah. Cheating spouses and a lousy attitude toward love.”

“There's the pregnancy, too.” Rebecca's eyes bored straight into his. “And I have to be honest and up-front about it, Trent. I need to make sure you understand that I will never, ever give up my baby. I want you to give
me
sole custody.”

While he'd known that was what she was after, it made him almost angry to hear her say it. “Am I such a bad guy?”

Her gaze dropped. “You're not a bad guy, no.” Color stained her cheeks and she pressed her lips together.

It made him think of the kiss. That surprising burst of heat. Maybe he would be better off distancing himself permanently from her. From the baby.

But he couldn't! Memories slammed him from all sides. Chubby cheeks, little fingers, hero worship. He thought of his nephew and Robbie Logan. He couldn't lose another child. He couldn't.

“I have to be honest, too,” he said. “I can't just walk away, Rebecca.”

She nodded, as if he'd confirmed her worst fears. “We'll have to come up with another plan, then.”

Yes, another plan. He thought they could, because, despite their initial misfires, they got along well enough. Very well, as a matter of fact. They could laugh together, enjoy each other's company, enjoy a kiss. Hell, that was more than his own parents had found in their marriage.

“Our baby should have a mother and a father in its life,” he said. “Full-time.”

Rebecca shrugged. “That's ideal, but not a necessity.”

Trent thought of his parents' marriage again. They'd lived separate lives, for all intents and purposes, but in the same house. They'd had the children between them, along with a boatload of animosity, but what if the animosity hadn't been there? What if they could have gotten along, two separate beings who shared living space and their progeny? That could have worked.

It
could
work.

“Maybe we should get married,” he said aloud, trying out the sound of it. “What do you think?”

D
ressed in his disguise of tattered jeans, plaid flannel shirt over a sweatshirt and Seattle Mariners baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, Everett Baker stood concealed on the other side of the flimsy, plywood back wall of the cotton-candy booth, listening to the couple inside. He knew Rebecca Holley by sight from his job as an accountant at the Children's Center. Trent Crosby he'd never met. At least not since they were children. Perhaps he should feel bad for eavesdropping on them, but eavesdropping was the least of his crimes.

The two in the booth would have other reasons to despise him.

Just as he'd begun to despise himself since he'd been on the run from the FBI.

But Nancy loves me.

He had to hold on to that. He'd already told Portland General Hospital's nurse Nancy Allen about the things he'd done, yet miraculously, she still loved him. She still believed in him.

He had to prove to her that her faith in him wasn't groundless. That there
was
a reason to love him. So leaving town was no longer an option. He had to own up to his crimes.

Though confident that no one would recognize the well-pressed bean-counter he'd been in his new grunge-guise, Everett walked behind the facades of the booths set up for the fair, where no one could see him. Even before the FBI had begun looking for him, that was how he'd lived most of his life—behind a facade, and distant from other people. Most of the time he blamed himself for that distance, it was his fault he was so shy, his fault he couldn't reach out and let people see who he really was.

Other times he realized that his childhood had forced that role and those ways upon him.

“Daddy!” Through the plywood barriers he could hear a young boy's voice. “Can we go to the park now? You promised we'd play ball today.”

Play ball.

A familiar scene fluttered through his mind. He used to think it was a fantasy, or something from an old movie or television program that he couldn't remember watching. But now he knew it for what it was—a memory. A box with crinkly silver paper. More paper inside.
And inside
that,
smelling almost as good as his mother's flowery perfume, a beautiful leather baseball mitt, just his size.

Can we play ball now, Dad? Can we? Can we?

He'd loved that mitt. He'd loved baseball.

But his father had changed. His father had gone from fun and loving to foul-mouthed and stinking of booze. His mother had changed, too. And his home had never been the same.

He
had never been the same. Not anything about him.

Now he found himself standing next to a payphone tucked beside one of the seldom-used side exits of Portland General. Digging through his pockets, he found some change, and without giving himself time to think about it, dialed the number. He'd memorized it from the card the detective had given him when he'd accompanied Nancy to the police station a few weeks before. Then, he'd tried to deflect her warnings about the possibility of a kidnapping ring by telling Detective Levine that the nurse was tired and overworked. He'd tried to give the police officer the impression that she was imagining things.

Now he was determined to confirm the truth of what Nancy had said. With the ringleader of their group, Charlie Prescott, found by the FBI and shot dead, Everett thought it was finally safe to do so.

“Detective Levine,” a voice said over the phone.

He thought of all the people he'd hurt. He thought of all he had to regret.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” The detective sounded impatient.

He thought of Nancy. Nancy and his mother and father—the way they'd been at first. “Hello, Detective,” he said. “We've spoken before. About a possible kidnapping ring.”

“Who is this?” the detective barked out.

“This is—” He hesitated, then forced out the words. “This is Everett Baker. I know you and the FBI have been looking for me and I'd like to come in. I have information that you need to hear.”

 

The evening of the children's fair, when Rebecca opened her front door to Trent, she knew he must have been kidding when he'd said “Maybe we should get married.” Despite the three large, but otherwise very ordinary bags of Chinese takeout in his arms, he was too…
too
for a woman such as herself. Too rich, too good-looking, too attractive to settle for a marriage of convenience based upon unforeseen circumstances.

“Aren't you going to invite me in?” he asked.

“Oh! Oh, yes.”
Oh, God.
She'd been standing in the doorway just staring at him. After making such a fool of herself at the fair, the last thing she wanted was to look ridiculous in his eyes again. She stepped aside and gestured him inside. “Let me take the food. I'll put it on plates and we can eat in the living room, okay?”

“Sure.” He leaned down to transfer the bags.

She circled her arms to take them from him. It should have been simple. But in the middle of the process, they both hesitated, and Rebecca felt paralyzed by the complexity of the task. Should she grab them, or should he
drop them? It was like a first kiss, she thought, all those awkward questions. Where to put the noses? Which way to turn your head?

Except they'd already shared a first kiss and it hadn't been awkward at all.

Hoping he couldn't read that latest thought on her face, she shuffled closer to him. He leaned farther forward. His forearms brushed against her breasts. Their bodies froze again.

Goose bumps shot across her chest and down her belly. She should close her arms around the bags. She should take them, then move away as if no contact had ever occurred.

Instead she held to that pose, her arms loosely circling his. His skin, bared to the elbow due to the sleeves of his rolled-up shirt, only a sweatshirt-thickness away from parts of her body that were growing heavier, achier by the heartbeat.

He cleared his throat. “Maybe I should carry these to the kitchen myself,” he said and turned that way.

Heat flooded Rebecca's face. What was happening to her? The poor man probably thought
she
thought he'd been serious about that joking proposal and that she was now eager to cement the deal with sex. She hurried after him, determined to put his mind at ease. “Look, I…”

In the kitchen, he was studying a framed photo collage of her family mounted on the wall beside the counter where he'd placed the bags. “Your people?” he asked, glancing over at her.

“My people?” she echoed, drawing closer to stand
alongside him and gaze at the montage of smiling faces. Her finger reached out to brush a speck of dust off the image of her mother. It had been the last Christmas she was alive. “Yes. My people.”

“They live nearby?”

She shook her head. “We're scattered all over the country. I don't think we've been all together for a holiday since these were taken. My mom had cancer and we wanted to make it one last memorable Christmas.” Grief tore a new hole in her heart.

What I wouldn't give to have my mom around right now. And to talk to her about the baby.

“What would she say?”

Rebecca started and jerked her gaze to Trent. “Did I speak out loud?”

He half smiled and drew the back of his forefinger down her cheek. “Afraid so.”

She frowned at him, hoping it would disguise the new heat on her face. “You make the oddest things to happen to me.”

That finger made another slow meander down her skin. “Yeah? Well, I'm beginning to regret not being there when the oddest thing I did to you happened.”

That took her a second to decipher. Once she did, she saw the spark of teasing in his eyes. “Oh, you!” She whacked his shoulder, just as if he was one of her hulking little brothers pictured inside the frame, and then bustled toward the counter to set out the food.

She felt him watching her. “What would she say?” he asked again.

“My mom?” With her attention focused on dishing out the chow mein, it wasn't so hard to speak about it. “She'd be thrilled that I was pregnant. She always told me I'd make a great mother.”

“What would she think of me as a father? As your husband?”

Rebecca looked up and was struck by the serious expression on his face. “I—I don't know.”

“I was sincere about us getting married, Rebecca.”

The serving spoon clattered onto the counter. “No, you weren't.”

“Oh, but I was.” He crossed over to her and she backed away. But instead of pressing forward, he took over the doling out of the food. “And here's your fair warning—I always get what I want.”

“You don't want me!” How could he? How could this tall, gorgeous man, who was so competently filling their plates—so
calmly
filling their plates—want to be her husband?

He refolded the flaps of the last carton, then took both plates in hand and led the way back to the living room, where she'd set places on the narrow coffee table in front of the love seat. As she seated herself, he followed suit.

Then he said, in that casual, calm way of his, “I
want
this baby.” With a practiced flip, he snapped open her folded cloth napkin and placed it in her lap. Then he put a fork into her nerveless fingers. “I won't settle for anything less than being our baby's father.”

Our baby.
That tore at her heart, too.

“Eat up,” Trent admonished, then set to his own meal with relish.

She could only stare at him. He thought he could say these things—
marriage, our baby
—without them affecting her appetite? He could say them, be thinking them, without them affecting
his
appetite?

But then she noticed he was merely stirring around his food, not actually putting any of it in his mouth. She narrowed her gaze. This was how he operated in business, she'd bet. Calmly, coolly, telling you what he wanted, what he was going to do, and then going ahead and acting on it as if you were willing to follow right along. Well! Rebecca Holley wasn't such an easy mark.

He gave her a sidelong look. “You're not going to buy right into this, are you?”

That he so easily read her mind startled her into laughing. “No, I'm not.”

He shrugged. “It was worth a try. It's a business tactic that will work if the opposition already wants to give what I'm asking for. I get a better deal and they convince themselves later they were steamrollered into it.”

“Well, you're not going to steamroller me.” It wasn't lost on her that the first tactic he'd chosen was the one he'd use on someone who already wanted to give what he was asking for. Apparently she
had
looked easy to him. She knew she had, darn it.

Rebecca forked up a bite of orange chicken and popped it into her mouth. With a small smile, he turned his attention to his own plate and really started eating
this time. Rebecca speared another bite of food and let her silence speak for itself.

By the time this evening was over, Trent Crosby was going to find out that Rebecca Holley had a spine of steel, not to mention pride.

He didn't try any more maneuvers on her as they finished their meal and cleared away the dishes. Then she made two after-dinner cups of green tea and carried them out to the love seat. Trent was holding a fortune cookie in each hand. “You choose,” he said, as she settled down beside him again, bending one leg beneath her body.

She took one, broke it open, read it aloud. “‘Help! I'm a prisoner in a fortune-cookie factory.' I always get that one.”

He laughed, then broke his. The little slip of paper fluttered to the ground between them. They both leaned forward, reached for it. Her hand found it first, his hand found hers.

Rebecca heard herself gasp.

“What is it? What's wrong?” He straightened up, frowning at her.

“A…a charley horse.” She had to say something, didn't she? It probably
was
some sort of cramp, something like that, anyway, that jolted through her at his touch.

“Let me rub it for you.”

“Oh, no, no!” But he was already tugging on that leg bent beneath her, and the sensation of his fingers on her again was sending her common sense skittering all over
the galaxy. Before she could gather it back up, her calf was in his lap and his long fingers were massaging her leg over the thick material of her sweatpants. He tipped off the backless tennies she was wearing to cup her heel in his hand.

“Your feet are cold.”

“Really?” They should be hot with all the blood that was leaving her brain and heading to points south. When he rubbed his knuckles against the arch of her foot, her fingers curled. The crackle of paper reminded her she still held his fortune in her hand.

Focusing on it instead of the seductive warmth of his touch, she read it aloud. “‘The truth will set you free.'”

He grimaced. “There's another original one.” His hands continued making their magic.

Rebecca told herself that it was natural for a woman who took care of others all day long to want to moan when a man bothered to take care of her. When he lifted her other foot into his lap, she didn't protest. She was getting used to his hands on her now, the electrical shock of it turning to a pleasant, almost drowsy buzz.

“But maybe the truth will set me free,” she heard him muse aloud.

“Hmm?” She looked at him through half-closed eyes. Her full cup of tea was on the table beside her, but it felt as if she'd already sipped it down, because her insides were warm and soft.

“Maybe it would help persuade you if I tell you why our baby is so important to me.”

Our baby.
The words didn't alarm her, didn't tear at
her heart as they had before. The busy day, his massaging fingers, the warm food in her belly were making her sleepy, that bone-deep sleepiness that she'd felt the other time he was here. “Why?” she almost whispered it. “Why is the baby so important to you?”