Safe Harbor (7 page)

She stared at him, caught off guard. “How did you know that? You were unconscious.”

“I heard you. You were talking in my sleep,” he said, now realizing it.

Mike was perspiring, Stevi noted. His forehead was damp. She was
not
about to let him leave the inn in this condition.

“You’re climbing back into that bed and that’s the end of it, understand? Andy?” she said, shifting to look at her younger sister. “Help me overpower this guy and get him into bed.”

Mike raised his right hand in surrender. He didn’t have enough strength to fight off one of them, much less two, even though they looked like little wisps. He had a feeling they were sheer steel underneath.

“Okay, okay, you talked me into it. I’ll stay put.” Trying to climb back in, he all but collapsed into the bed, barely having enough strength to swing his legs in after him.

“Just what are you going to tell Dad?” Andy said.

A lopsided smile curved her lips. “He followed me home, Dad, can I keep him?”

Andy shook her head. “That’s not going to work.”

Moving around the room as she thought, Stevi was willing to admit that though whimsical, saying something playful to her father at a time like this was
not
the way to go.

“Didn’t think so,” she agreed, then said, “I’ll tell him the truth. That I found Mike unconscious and hurt. Dad doesn’t turn out anyone in need, right?”

“Right,” Andy said, although she didn’t look convinced.

“And Cris has already softened him up for us,” Stevi continued as Cris came out of the bathroom, looking a wee bit worse for wear.

Hearing her name, Cris looked at her, waiting. “And how did I do that?”

“You told Dad yesterday morning that you’re pregnant. You know what a pushover he is for grandchildren. How did he react?”

Cris quickly looked at Andy and then back. “Stevi! I didn’t end up telling him because I decided I wanted to wait until my husband was with me before I told anyone and now you’ve gone ahead and told Andy? I can’t believe you.”

Oh, no. “Oops. Well, if I hadn’t told Andy, she would’ve kicked down the bathroom door and then you would have had some explaining to do. Think of it as a favor I did you.”

“Thanks.” Cris rolled her eyes.

Andy was at Cris’s side and hugging her before their expecting sister could lambaste Stevi any further. Then suddenly, they were all laughing and shaking their heads.

“This is great,” Stevi said in realization. “Now you can tell Dad and he’ll be shocked as well as happy. You’ll soften him up and stun him all at once. What’s one wounded man washing ashore on our beach compared to your wonderful news?”

Mike had remained silent for most of the exchange, feeling for the most part that it was best to speak only when someone addressed him directly. After listening to her, he now looked at the young woman who had rescued him with a new admiration.

She was devious and she thought fast on her feet. The agency he’d left in his past would have loved to have someone like her on their payroll. As for him, he was grateful she was in his corner. He just hoped that neither one of them—especially her—would regret this unforeseen alliance.

CHAPTER NINE

“W
HAT
’
S
UP
? I
CAME
as soon as I got your message,” Shane McCallister, Cris’s husband for all of six months, said as he entered the kitchen through the side delivery entrance and crossed to her, nodding to Andy and Jorge as he passed and mussing little Ricky’s hair affectionately.

He slipped a protective arm around the woman he’d known since they were back in high school. Brushing a kiss against her cheek, he asked in a lower voice, “Are you all right?”

Cris smiled at him, touched by his concern. “Except for horrible bouts of nausea, yes, I’m all right.”

He quickly looked up at the others to see if they’d heard what she said, but Andy was picking at something sizzling on the stove while Jorge tried to shoo her back.

Of course he was glad that his wife was okay, but he didn’t understand why she’d called him away from his construction project. The message he’d gotten on his voice mail made his appearance back at the inn sound urgent.

“Then why the 911-sounding call?” Shane asked, still not 100 percent convinced there was nothing wrong.

She turned into him, keeping her own voice low. “Because I wanted you here when I told my family—my dad, really—about the baby.”

They had decided to make the announcement when the family was together for some special function. What had changed?

“Just like that?” Shane asked quizzically. “For no reason?”

Cris thought of the man Stevi had in her room. Where to begin the explanation? “Well, there’s a little more to it than that,” she admitted.

Where she had hesitated, her five-year-old, privy to more than he should have been, did not.

“Aunt Stevi’s got a man in her bed,” Ricky piped up. The boy was old enough to know that the situation was out of the ordinary, but too young to understand why.

“What?” Shane asked, bewildered. “What’s he talking about?” He looked from his wife to Andy, his sister-in-law, who now joined their conversation, for an explanation.

Cris placed her hand on his chest. “Long story,” she answered, then added quickly, “which I will tell you as soon as we tell my father that we’re adding to his family tree.”

By now Shane was thoroughly confused—not to mention that Andy and Jorge seemed to know that he and Cris were expecting a child...so he appeared to be late to the family announcement part of the revelation anyway. “What does one have to do with the other?”

This, at least, she could set straight for him. “Stevi thinks if we tell Dad about the baby, he’ll be in a really good mood and then she can tell him her story,” Cris explained.

Okay, now things were falling in place a little bit. Stevi had always been the unpredictable one in the family, Shane thought.

“If there’s a guy in her bed, your father’s not going to be overjoyed but I don’t think she has to worry about him shooting the guy.”

“He’s already been shot,” Ricky told his stepfather importantly.

Cris looked reprovingly at her son. No matter how hard she tried to keep him out of things, somehow Ricky always managed to wind up right in the middle, and he absorbed everything.

She sighed. “Little pitchers have big ears.”

Ricky’s face scrunched up as if that would help him understand what his mother was saying. “You mean like a baseball pitcher?”

This was getting her nowhere. “Just come,” she said to Shane, taking his hand.

Shane looked around as they passed the reception area. “So where is your father?”

Still holding her husband’s hand, Cris led the way down a corridor. Ricky skipped along beside them. “It’s Andy’s job to bring Dad and Alex to Stevi’s room.”

“Why can’t we all meet in the reception area, or the veranda?”

“This is family stuff,” Cris explained. “Dad wouldn’t want one of the inn’s guests overhearing—especially if he winds up having a meltdown.”

“Meltdown?” Shane repeated. This was beginning to sound somewhat serious. “Your father’s one of the most level-headed people I’ve ever met. He takes everything in stride.”

She hoped that would continue to be true, but it didn’t hurt to take precautions. “Everyone has their breaking point and Stevi can drive someone there faster than anyone else I know. Let’s just say we’re being cautious.”

“So Stevi’s trying to use our unborn baby as a shield?” Shane concluded, amused.

“Let’s just say she knows what a softie Dad is when it comes to little people.” Cris stopped walking and looked at her husband. Maybe she was taking too much for granted. “Are you okay with this?”

“Anything you want is okay with me,” Shane assured her, giving the hand holding his a quick squeeze. “You know that.”

Cris smiled at him as they turned down the hallway to Stevi’s room. “Yes, I do.”

She’d gotten lucky twice, Cris couldn’t help thinking. Once when she’d married her first husband, Ricky’s father, and once when Shane reentered her life last year. After Ricky’s father had been killed in the service of his country, she really didn’t think she would ever be able to love again. But then, she’d underestimated Shane’s persistence. Thank heaven he hadn’t given up on her.

“Can I tell Grandpa, Mama?” Ricky asked, shifting from foot to foot, looking at her eagerly. “Can I, please? I’ve been good and kept the secret like you told me to. I didn’t say anything to Grandpa about our baby.”

Cris found that part rather incredible, seeing as how it usually seemed as if words entered Ricky’s ears and came out of his mouth almost simultaneously. She had never known him to keep a secret before and she had gone through a great deal of coaching to get him to promise not to say a word to his grandfather until they made their announcement.

Of course, she thought, amused, she’d only told the boy an hour ago. But for Ricky, an hour was an eternity if it involved keeping a secret.

“Yes, you did,” she agreed, planting a kiss on top of the boy’s head, and sharing a smile with Shane, nodding to reassure him that the news had gone over well with her son—his son now, too. “This is our secret to tell, Daddy’s and mine,” she reminded him. She was delighted that Ricky had taken so easily to calling her new husband his daddy.

“How come?” Ricky’s eyebrows formed one wiggly, quizzical line. “The baby’s in your tummy, not Daddy’s.”

“For now, but it’s
our
baby, remember?” she corrected.

“For now?” the boy echoed, then a look of genuine distress came over his features. “It’s not going into my tummy next, is it?” As if to make sure, he looked down at his T-shirt.

Cris pressed her lips together, struggling not to laugh out loud.

“No, you and your daddy are safe. I just meant the baby is part of the family so in that way, it’s
our
baby,” she explained.

Cris had never been so happy to reach Stevi’s room in her life.

“Here we are,” she announced, knocking.

“If you’d waited for the door to open the last time instead of walking in like that, you might not have had to drag your husband away from his job site,” Stevi observed as she opened the door. “Hi, Shane. Sorry about this.”

“No problem,” Shane answered, looking over her head. He nodded toward the man on the bed. He was propped up with several pillows, his chest bandaged. What was going on, he wondered. “Who’s that?”

Stevi beckoned her brother-in-law forward. “Mike Ryan, this is my brother-in-law Shane McCallister. Shane, this is Mike Ryan.”

Leaning forward, Shane shook the man’s hand. “Friend of Stevi’s?” he asked the man.

Mike replied, “Might say she’s a lifesaver. My lifesaver.”

“What is all this?”

Richard Roman’s gentle but authoritative voice was heard in the hallway. Stevi instantly spun around, alert. Braced. She took in a deep breath.

Showtime,
she thought.

“Dad, Alex,” Stevi began, addressing the two latest arrivals Andy had brought, “Cris and Shane—”

“And me!” Ricky exclaimed.

Stevi flashed a quick smile at her nephew. “—and Ricky have something to tell you,” she announced, plowing forward to get in front of her father. She was trying to divert his attention for as long as possible from what was in the room just beyond her sisters, brother-in-law and nephew.

Taking her cue from Stevi, Cris said excitedly, “We’re pregnant, Dad.”

“Really?” Richard cried, a huge smile bursting over his lean face.

“Really,” Cris confirmed. “I’m a little more than one month along. About two weeks behind Alex,” she added, glancing at her older sister.

“Cris, that’s wonderful,” Alex cried, grabbing both of Cris’s hands in hers. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

Cris gave her the same reason she’d told Stevi. “I didn’t want to steal the spotlight from you.”

“Idiot!” Alex cried, pulling her sister into her arms and hugging her hard. “The spotlight’s big enough for both of us.” Alex went on to hug Shane as Richard, tears shimmering in his eyes, embraced Cris.

“I am so happy for you—and for us,” Richard said into her hair as he held on to her. “And if my vision wasn’t so blurred by these tears in my eyes, I’d swear there was a man in Stevi’s bed.” Releasing Cris, he stepped back, shifting so that he could embrace his son-in-law. “But that’s just my eyes, playing tricks on me, isn’t it?” Richard’s question was directed toward Stevi.

There was no way around this. She had to face up to the truth.

“No, Dad, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you,” Stevi said, praying for words that would make her father see her side.

Richard moved around the circle of family and approached Stevi’s double bed and the man who was in it.

“Hello, I’m Richard Roman,” he introduced himself as if finding a bandaged man here was an ordinary, everyday occurrence. “And you are...?”

“Very grateful to your daughter for saving my life,” Mike said, thinking it was best to begin with that piece of information. “Mike Ryan, sir.”

Attempting to sit up, Mike extended his hand toward Stevi’s father. The loss of blood he’d suffered made him fall back against the pillows as if he’d just exerted a great deal of energy.

Richard turned to Stevi. “Did you get a doctor to look at him?”

“Not exactly,” she hedged, not really sure how she was going to explain anything at all about this situation, much less work around incriminating Silvio.

She could have spared herself the concern.

Her father looked pointedly at the bandage covering Mike’s chest. “Silvio did this, didn’t he?”

Stevi’s mouth dropped open. She was stunned that her father would guess that right out of the box. Recovering, she rallied quickly, taking all the blame. It was the least she could do for the man who’d been her reluctant coconspirator.

“I made him do it, Dad,” she told him. “Please don’t be angry at Silvio.”

“I’m not angry,” Richard replied calmly. “I’d expect him to do nothing less.”

If he noticed how surprised his words rendered everyone else in the room except for Ricky, who really didn’t understand the exchange, Richard gave no indication.

Moving closer, her father pressed his long fingers against Mike’s forehead. A satisfied expression slipped over his face.

“It doesn’t feel as if you have a fever,” Richard informed him.

Mike put his own meaning to the words. He was being told he was well enough to go. The nod he offered caused him a little dizziness but he struggled to disregard it. “I’ll leave the inn if you just give me half an hour to get—”

“You’re in no condition to be going anywhere.” He looked around for any sign of used dishes or discarded trays. “Have you been eating?”

Stevi spoke up. “I brought him food, but he’s been asleep most of the time so he hasn’t eaten since yesterday morning.”

Richard frowned. “I thought as much. You need to eat, boy. Stevi will feed you if need be, but you have to build your strength. That’s all you have to concentrate on right now,” he said with a smile, patting the arm closest to him. “Getting stronger. Now, the rest of you,” he said, turning to address his family, “leave the room. Give Mike some air to breathe. Stevi, you know what to do.”

She looked at her father sheepishly. He had never been the kind of father who yelled first and thought things through later, but she had still been worried about his reaction to all this. She hadn’t really expected him to be
this
understanding.

“Beg for forgiveness?”

“Feed your friend,” Richard corrected. And then his eyes met hers. “We’ll talk later,” he promised.

Maybe begging should have been the way to go, she thought.

“Is Aunt Stevi in trouble, Grandpa?” Ricky asked, wanting to know everything about everything.

Taking his hand, Cris pulled her son to her. “Ricky, hush,” she chided.

“Yes, she is.” Richard’s answer to his grandson’s question surprised the rest of his family. “She should have come to me right away,” he told the boy, raising his voice just loud enough for Stevi to hear as well, as he walked out.

Stevi watched her family file out noisily after him. It wasn’t an orderly retreat.

The whole scene made her smile with affection—as well as relief. That her father wanted to talk later was to be expected and at least he wasn’t angry with her. And that was all that really mattered.

Once she and Mike were alone, Stevi pulled her chair closer to the bed again, then went to fetch the plate of scrambled eggs and ham to go that she’d had Jorge prepare earlier.

Sitting down, she looked at Mike. “You heard the man. You have to eat,” she said, holding the plate in one hand and offering him a fork with the other. “If you can’t do it yourself, I have no problem feeding you,” she said. “Just say the word.”

“Your father didn’t ask me any questions,” he said in amazement. “And despite that, he’s still letting me stay here.”

Things like that just didn’t happen in his world. He operated in an atmosphere of constant danger, suspicion and mistrust. This almost seemed like a dream. It certainly wasn’t part of any reality he was familiar with.

Stevi nodded as relief curved her lips into a smile. She had
really
thought that this time, she’d pushed her father’s buttons. It just showed her how much she had underestimated her father.