Delores Fossen - Covert Conception

After all, someone had cleaned up the “crime scene.”

Someone had gotten both Rick and his motorcycle back to his house. Someone had dressed her for bed and discarded any evidence that anything out of the ordinary had happened. So that meant someone at her party had been involved on a very personal level. Her mother was the first step to figuring out whom.

And they could do that after they told Macy about the pregnancy.

Natalie was already dreading the conversation. It would be messy. Her mother just wasn’t very good at handling contingencies, and this pregnancy definitely fell into that category. There’d be tears and perhaps hours of melodrama. Unfortunately, her mother had to know.

Rick grabbed his keys from the desk and headed for the door. Natalie was right behind him.

“We’ll take my car,” she insisted.

Rick glanced over his shoulder and gave her that look. One she instantly recognized. And hated. She called it his blue-collar/chip-on-the-shoulder glare.

“This has nothing to do with the price of my vehicle,” she pointed out. “It’s just I’m conveniently parked right out front, and I’m not exactly dressed to climb onto the back of your Harley.”

He made a sound to indicate he didn’t believe her explanation.

She made a sound to indicate she didn’t care what he thought.

It was going to be a long drive to Macy’s.

“Besides,” she added, “riding a motorcycle in my condition wouldn’t be smart. And even you can’t argue with that.”

He didn’t.

With both of them still stewing and no doubt asking themselves a dozen unanswerable questions, Rick let one of his employees know that he needed to run an errand before they got into her car.

Natalie hadn’t thought the tension could get any worse, but she was obviously wrong. Without the noise and the distraction of the shop, the silence settled uncomfortably between them. And with each additional moment of silence, Natalie became more and more upset. More and more frightened.

More and more incensed.

Why was this happening?

Why had she become pregnant with Rick’s child?

Rick, of all people.

They had so much bad blood between them. Too much. But it hadn’t always been that way. Rick and she had known each other since childhood, and her mother had tried to get them together for years. Why, it was never clear to Natalie, but apparently Macy felt that Rick and she were the “perfect couple” destined to lead the “perfect life.”

Ironic.

Because her family was old money. To the proverbial manor born. Rick, on the other hand, was a self-made businessman with a keen sense of turning nothing into plenty of something. No Ivy League degree for him. No degree at all. He’d shunned his parents’ investment business and had become everything they hadn’t wanted him to be—the owner of a custom motorcycle shop. Yet, the normally socially conscious Macy had seemingly overlooked all of that so she could encourage a relationship that Natalie and Rick knew would never happen.

And it wouldn’t happen because of that one lapse in judgment three years earlier.

Neither Rick nor she had had much luck coping with that lapse. Hell on earth wasn’t just a meaningless expression for them. They were living it.

“You’re totally certain about this pregnancy?” Rick asked.

Natalie almost preferred the silence to the question. There was none of that chip-on-the-shoulder animosity in his voice, which meant all of this was likely sinking in, and he wasn’t taking it too well.

“Dead certain,” she assured him.

Rick shook his head, leaned forward. “I don’t remember even speaking to you that night.”

“Same here,” she agreed.

“Yet according to that video, we ended up in the hall outside your bedroom. Kissing. Touching…”

Oh, yes. Definitely kissing. Definitely touching. They’d been all over each other—literally.

Though she knew it wasn’t possible, especially since she hadn’t remembered anything else, Natalie could have sworn she recalled that kiss.

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and it was as if that one glance opened the hormonal floodgates. There were still no specific memories for the night of the party. But there were other memories, ones that were best forgotten.

As was Rick.

And she’d spent the last three years trying not to remember that he was the most unforgettable man she’d ever known.

It was hard to believe all of his mismatched features could add up to something extraordinary. But heaven help the female population, they did. The olive, bronzy skin: a DNA contribution from his Greek father. Those sizzling gray eyes framed with indecently long lashes. The cheekbones of a Celtic warrior. She’d yet to meet a woman of any age or any background who hadn’t found Rick Gravari hot.

Including her.

Much to her disgust.

That one kiss they’d shared three years ago, that one short lapse in judgment had caused someone to die. Not just someone though. Someone they both loved.

“David,” she said under her breath.

A little over three years ago David had asked her to marry him. She’d said yes, even though David knew she didn’t love him. He also knew she was looking for an out, a way to stop her mother’s relentless matchmaking. That’s why Natalie had agreed to be his fiancée. But not his wife. She’d told him upfront that there would be no marriage.

David obviously had thought he could change her mind.

Natalie had thought an engagement ring would stop her from wanting Rick. It hadn’t. One night, Rick and she had run into each other at a party. They’d talked. Had too much to drink. Had gotten way too close. One thing led to another, and they kissed.

Just as David walked in on them.

Obviously feeling betrayed by his two best friends, David had swallowed what turned out to be a lethal dose of sleeping pills. He’d died in the ER only a few hours later.

David’s death would always be with Rick and her. It would always connect them.

And it would always keep them apart.

At least Natalie had been sure of that until now. Until this pregnancy.

She was carrying Rick’s baby. That was the one element that neither of them could dismiss. And it was the element that had brought them together.

“Take the next turn to get to Commerce Street,” Rick instructed. “And don’t put on your blinker.”

“Why?” she immediately asked, forcing herself out of her troubling thoughts.

“Just do it.”

And for some reason unknown to her, she obeyed him. Maybe it was because she had no fight or argument left in her, but it also had something to do with that suddenly intense expression on Rick’s face.

“Do you recognize that SUV behind us?” Rick asked.

Natalie’s attention flew to the rearview mirror. There was indeed a black SUV following closely behind them. “No. Why?”

“Because it’s been behind us since we left the shop.”

“It’s probably a coincidence.” This particular street wasn’t the busiest in the city, but it did lead to several main intersections.

“Maybe.” But he didn’t sound as if he believed that.

Natalie, on the other hand, decided to hope for the best. She’d already had enough thrown at her for one day without borrowing more trouble.

“Take the next left,” Rick told her.

Without turning on her signal, she waited until the last possible second to make the turn. She was going a little too fast, and the tires squealed in protest.

She checked the mirror again.

The SUV made the same slightly out-of-control turn.

Her heart went into overdrive. That turn didn’t seem to be a coincidence. It seemed deliberate. But why would someone be following them?