Delores Fossen - Covert Conception

Rick’s movements were jerky. Stiff. Angry. And he kept casting glances her way. Natalie was casting some his way as well.

Sweet heaven, if she thought for one minute that he’d had any voluntary part in this, she would have had him arrested. Except an arrest wouldn’t really have given her answers.

Nor would it change what had happened.

She slid her hand over her stomach. A baby. Even though she’d seen the ultrasound, it didn’t seem real. Maybe once she understood the circumstances, once she’d heard a plausible explanation—any explanation—maybe then she could come to terms with this. It wasn’t logical, but at the moment, she needed that hope.

Rick said an abrupt goodbye to the caller and slammed down the phone as if he’d declared war on it. In the same motion, he waved off one of his employees who was trying to get his attention through the small window.

“What exactly do you remember about that night?” Rick demanded.

The answer was readily available on the tip of her tongue—mainly because she’d already asked herself the same question again and again. “I was on prescription meds, and I was exhausted. So, most of the party is a little blurry.”

“How could we not remember that?” He pointed to the frozen image of them on the screen.

“I don’t know.”

He made a sound of agreement. It blended with his jagged huffs of breaths. “How do we know it really happened? Those people could be actors.”

“They aren’t. Kitt had the images enhanced, and if they’re actors, then they’re exact replicas of us, right down to my freckles and that little scar on the left side of your neck that you got fly-fishing when you were a kid.”

He threw his hands in the air before dropping them to his hips. “Then, maybe that’s what they are—actors with very authentic makeup.”

She gave a weary been-there-done-that sigh. “I would love it if that were true. But it wouldn’t explain the bruise on my arm. Or the bruise on your shoulder. And it certainly wouldn’t explain this pregnancy.”

“Maybe the pregnancy happened some other time,” he fired back.

For some reason, a reason Natalie didn’t want to explore, that stung. Yet, Rick certainly had a right to ask that. If their positions had been reversed, she would certainly want to know.

“I haven’t had sex in over a year,” Natalie explained. Not easily. Discussing her love life—or lack thereof—with Rick Gravari wasn’t tops on her list of favorite things to do. “At least, I haven’t had sex that I know about.”

He cocked his head to the side and gave her a flat look. “And you think you unknowingly had sex with me?”

Weary of the questions and the verbal battle between them, she tipped her head back to the screen. “It’s you in that video, Rick. But if you’re looking for definitive proof, I don’t have it. The video can’t be further enhanced. There’s no footage from a different angle that might give us a clearer image. And it’s too early to do a DNA test to prove paternity. I asked,” she added when his flat look was no longer so flat.

That caused a slight lift of his eyebrow. Natalie responded by lifting an eyebrow of her own. And by asking one very important question. “You said you blacked out at the party. What happened?”

He didn’t respond right away. Rick groaned softly and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Your caterer, I think.”

The fit of temper that Natalie had nourished and fed suddenly cooled. “What does the caterer have to do with any of this?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.” He paused, caught her gaze. “Someone put something in my drink.”

Natalie considered what he was saying. “You think that someone was the caterer?”

He nodded. “The only thing I had to eat or drink that night was at your party.”

“That proves nothing.”

Or did it? Because someone on the catering staff, a man, had given her a drink as well. Sparkling fruit juice. It’d had a somewhat bitter tang to it. At the time Natalie had attributed the taste to her prescription meds.

“No. But the lab test I had done proves something,” Rick corrected.

That captured Natalie’s complete attention. “What lab test?”

There was no sign of cockiness or victory in his stormy gray eyes. There was only frustration and yes, lots of anger and confusion. “When I woke up that morning after the party, I realized I didn’t have a clue how I’d gotten home. My motorcycle was there, parked outside the garage, a place I’d never leave it. Never. Since I felt like hell, I went to see my doctor right away. He ran some tests, and the lab found a substance in my blood.”

“What kind of substance?” Natalie asked.

Rick shook his head. “It was some kind of narcotic. My doctor had no idea what it was so he sent it out for further testing. The lab is still trying to identify it.”

Natalie was so glad she was sitting down. If she hadn’t been, that would have sent her in search of a chair. She felt a couple of steps past being light-headed. But she wasn’t so light-headed that she didn’t immediately spot an inconsistency in his account.

“Why didn’t you go to the police with this?” Natalie demanded.

“And tell them what, exactly? That maybe someone at your party slipped an unspecified narcotic into my drink? I decided I’d wait for the lab results before I started pointing any fingers. Of course, that was before I saw that surveillance video. I’m ready to do some finger-pointing now.”

Natalie shifted her position slightly, trying to find some kind of equilibrium both mentally and physically. “Why would someone on the catering staff have drugged you?”

“I’ve asked myself that a dozen times, and the only thing I could come up with was maybe it wasn’t intentional. Maybe the beer was contaminated or something.”

“Then why wasn’t anyone else affected?” she immediately asked.

He stared at her and waited for her to draw her own conclusions. It didn’t take long. Rick was likely the only person at the party drinking beer. It was indeed a champagne crowd. But then, she was probably the only one who’d had sparkling fruit juice.

And that in turn meant it would have been fairly easy to drug them.

That explained the how, but it certainly didn’t explain the who and why.

“I don’t know the caterer,” she continued. “And I don’t know the man who handed me my drink.”

But she could find out, and that’s exactly what she intended to do.

Natalie checked her watch. It was nearly 6:00 p.m. and she wished for more hours in the day, because her list of things to do was growing. “I want to talk to your doctor and the lab technician who ran the test on you. I’ll also want to talk to my mother, since she’s the one who hired the caterer. She’ll be home from her therapy session by now. I’ll call her.”

Rick caught onto her wrist when she reached into her purse for her phone. “Think this through. If you start asking questions about the caterer, your mother will want to know why. And she won’t quit until she gets the truth. The whole truth. So, if you plan to tell her about the baby tonight, you won’t want to do that over the phone.”

That was true. Natalie only wished she’d thought of it first.

“We’ll drive over there and talk to her,” Rick insisted, keeping hold of her wrist.

Natalie shook off his grip. “We?”

“We,” he confirmed. Without warning, he peeled off his damp T-shirt, grabbed a clean one from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and slipped it on. “I want to get to the bottom of this, too, and I want as much information as we can get about this caterer.”

Natalie almost argued with him. Mainly because it was natural to argue with Rick about any- and everything. But he had a point. The caterer or someone on his or her staff could have orchestrated all of this.