Jennifer Greene - The Baby Chase

First, though, he had to get rid of Rebecca. How a woman could still be so fired up in the middle of the night was beyond him—especially a woman who looked like she’d tangled with a whole gang in a back alley. Her face was as white as a virgin’s wedding dress, and the gash on her forehead was clearly swelling under the bandage.

“You never believed I’d find anything, now did you? Just like you didn’t believe me about my mother months ago. Logic isn’t always more valuable than intuition, love bug. A woman and a man simply think differently. Even if I hadn’t read a ton of reference books on crime-solving, sometimes a woman can just sense things—”

When she had to stop to take a breath, he broke in.” I admit it. You did good. But it’s going on 4:00 a.m. I think it’s time we called this a night.”

“You mean go home?” From the look on her face, the idea was as appealing as a case of chicken pox.

“I’m beat. I’m ready to pack this in, and I’m sure not leaving you alone here. You got a good lead—” he hastened to get that in, before she could praise herself for another hour and a half on the subject “—and as soon as I catch a few hours’ rest, I’ll run with it.”

“Well, I agree, if you’re beat, you should go home. But I could stay and keep looking a little longer. Maybe Monica had some other hiding places—”

“Maybe she did. But that’s a needle-in-a-haystack possibility, considering all the people who’ve been over this place. And the letter is something concrete that can be pursued immediately. Besides which, we’ve been at this for hours—”

“I’m not tired,” she immediately assured him. He saw the mutinous thrust of her chin.

His chin was bigger, and his scowl had a long history of intimidating potential mutineers before. “The hell you aren’t. You look like the battered loser in a cat fight, and you’re not going to tell me that you aren’t starting to feel those bruises. That bump on your forehead alone has to hurt like a bitch. Now where’s your car?”

She didn’t look even nominally intimidated, but the question effectively distracted her. “About a mile past the main gate. There was a bunch of big old walnut trees that made for a perfect dark place to park. And if I parked that far away, I figured no one would see me when I climbed the fence—”

“I don’t want to hear any more about your breaking-and-entering debacle.” God, she was going to give him gray hair. Until meeting her, he’d considered himself a relatively young thirty-eight. There’d been nothing to turn his hair white but death, destruction, and a few terrorists from his Special Forces days. “Wherever your car is, it sounds too far to walk. Mine’s parked out front, so I’ll just drive you there. Now where’d you leave your wet sweatshirt?”

“In the kitchen.” She glanced down at the black V-neck sweater, and abruptly clutched the neck closed. Heaven knew why. He’d seen her bra, seen her cleavage, seen every inch of her long white throat more than once tonight. Geronimo persisted in responding to her, no matter what repression techniques Gabe tried.

“I’d better put my sweatshirt back on, but where should I put the sweater back?”

“Just keep the sweater. I can’t imagine anyone would know or care if you borrowed it. I’ll get it from you and return it sometime, but putting on a wet sweatshirt on a cold night doesn’t make any sense. Just grab it—and that packsack you carried in with you—so we can go.”

“I think I may have left a light on upstairs. And I have some stuff to clean up in the closet. And I’d better wash out that shot glass—”

There was a reason Gabe always worked alone. His employees were good at teamwork, and often enough his staff paired up for different projects. Not him. He just didn’t like depending on other people. He liked being able to move fast and streamlined.

By the time Rebecca was “done” with all her messing around, he could have finished a slowpoke sucker.

He ushered her outside, turned to lock up the front door, and motioned her toward the long, low antique Morgan.

She wolf-whistled. Almost as good as a man. “What a darling,” she murmured.

“Yeah, she is. ’55. But she was cosseted as a showpiece for most of those years, so she doesn’t have that many miles on her.”

“You can still get parts?”

“Not easily. Parts are not only hard to find, they cost an arm and a leg. Damn few antique dealers even know this breed of car anymore.”

“But you don’t care, do you? She’s worth all the trouble.”

“Yeah.” He hadn’t expected Rebecca to understand. He opened the passenger door and watched her long, slim legs disappear under the long, slim console. The aggravating thought crossed his mind that she was made for the car.

Lack of sleep was obviously the reason he wasn’t thinking clearly. He closed her in, locked her door and hiked around to the other side. The engine purred as soon as he turned the key.

“What a beautiful baby,” she murmured.

Her comment about babies inevitably reminded him of the comment she’d made earlier about sperm banks. He told himself to keep quiet, that it was none of his business…but the comment had nagged at the back of his mind all night.

For a few minutes, he stayed silent. The storm had died, but a fine silver mist was still drizzling down. Grass and trees glistened in the ghostly night as he tooled down the driveway, stopping to unlock the gate with a set of keys. No one seemed to be awake or alive for miles. There were no lights, and no sounds but the rustling trees and the whisper of that diamond-studded mist.

Locating her car was easy; there were no other vehicles on the road. He pulled up behind the cherry red Ciera and glanced at her. She’d raved pretty enthusiastically about his car, and coming from the Fortune family, she could probably have owned a fleet of Morgans if she chose. Instead, she’d picked solid, reliable wheels. A wholesome four-door, yet. A capital F family car—for a lady who made no secret of her desire and love for family—and somehow he just couldn’t let it go.

“You aren’t serious about looking into sperm banks.”

“Sure I am.” While the engine idled, she ducked her head to gather up her things.

“The last I knew, a husband was sort of the usual way to get a baby. Or at least some guy in the direct picture.”

“Usually,” she agreed wryly. “Believe me, I haven’t quit looking. But being a Fortune has a few disadvantages—a lot of guys were more interested in courting the family money than me. And sitting home writing books doesn’t make for meeting a lot of new men, either. It just isn’t that easy to find a white knight—or it hasn’t been for me—and I’ve got a biological clock ticking loud and strong.”

“I’ll bet you have been prey to a lot of fortune hunters…but you’re hardly ancient.”

“Old enough. Thirty-three is a good, healthy age to have a child. And, thankfully, this is the nineties. No one’s going to look sideways if I choose to be a single mom. This is an ideal time for me to have a baby—I’m ready, I’m healthy, I’m financially prepared to be a parent, and I’m dying for a baby. Or six.”

Six? Gabe swallowed hard. “You don’t think sperm banks are a little…drastic?”

“I think marrying the wrong man just because I’m hungry for a family would be ‘drastic.’ I’m sold on true love, cutie, and have absolutely no interest in settling for less. But I also want a family. Children to love and care for. For sure it’d be better if there was a loving dad in the picture, but if that’s not in the cards, there’s no reason I can’t deal from another deck.”

“Have you talked this out with your mama?”