Читать книгу His Secret Baby: The Agent's Secret Baby - Carla Cassidy, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 12

An ache woke her up. It shot through her entire body, from the very roots of her hair down to the tips of her toes. All except for two of her fingernails—one on each hand—and those felt numb because she’d clutched so fiercely at her comforter while pushing out her daughter.

Her daughter. She had a daughter? She had a daughter.

Her eyes flew open, the very act instantly divorcing her from the dream she’d been having.

She didn’t need to remember, she knew the dream by heart. It was the same dream that had invaded a third of her nights in the last eight months. A dream that echoed what she’d felt that one glorious night that she and Adam had made love.

Eve blew out a breath. She hadn’t had that dream for at least a couple of weeks now and had begun to nurse the hope that she was finally over it.

Finally over him.

Having Adam pop back into her life had brought the dream back in vivid living color—both the bad and the good.

Adam.

Last night’s events came rushing back to her, assaulting her brain and sending her system into high alert. She couldn’t let her guard down. Now that she knew what he was, she had to remain vigilant—at least, until she was sure that he’d changed.

If only …

As she remembered the last words that had passed between them, her eyes darted toward the chair where he’d sat down.

It was empty.

A sinking feeling set in and she railed against it. How lame could she have been, asking him to stay with her a little while longer? What in heaven’s name had gotten into her? Nothing had changed—and probably he hadn’t, either. She wanted Adam to go, not stay. So why had she suddenly felt so vulnerable? Why had she asked him to stay with her like a child who was afraid of the dark?

A noise came from the doorway and she glanced over, half hoping—Idiot!

A blonde nurse walked in. She looked as if she was about twenty-two. A young two-twenty at that. The nurse pushed a see-through bassinette before her.

“Someone here wants to see her mommy,” the nurse all but chirped cheerfully.

Eve squinted ever so slightly, reading the nurse’s name tag: Kathy.

As Kathy parked the bassinette at the foot of the bed, she scanned the room. “Your husband stepped out?” she asked.

It took Eve a second to make the connection. “He’s not my husband,” she corrected.

“Oh.” The response seemed to squelch the nurse’s enthusiasm, but just for the barest moment. And then the insuppressible cheerfulness returned. “Well, anyway, he seemed very devoted to you.” Picking the baby up, Kathy made a few soothing noises to the infant and then placed the tiny bundle into Eve’s arms.

Eve hated the fact that she was distracted even the slightest bit, but the nurse’s comment had aroused her curiosity. She patted the baby’s bottom as she asked, “What makes you say that?”

Kathy moved around the room, drawing back the curtains at the window, tucking the blanket in on one side. She seemed as if she needed to be in perpetual motion.

“Well, for one thing, he stayed here most of the night. He was sitting by your bed when I came on my shift this morning,” she added.

Eve saw only one reason for that. “He must’ve fallen asleep.”

But Kathy shook her head, a wistful smile curving the corners of her mouth. “Looked pretty wide-awake to me. Gail said he’d been there all night, just watching you sleep.”

“Gail?”

“The nurse who was on before me.” She smiled down into Brooklyn’s face. Wide-awake, the infant appeared to absorb her surroundings. “The baby looks like him,” Kathy commented. And then she raised her eyes quickly to look at her patient, as if she realized that she’d just tripped over her tongue. “He is the father, right?”

“Yes,” Eve said quietly, gazing at her daughter’s face. A face that had more in common with Adam than with her. “He’s the father.”

A shade under six feet with an almost painfully thin body, Danny Sederholm leaned indolently against the side of the cement steps of the renovated campus library. The renovation had been conducted, in part, thanks to his father and his uncle’s generous contributions. Both were former alumni of the prestigious college, as was his mother. It made coasting easier.

The student’s small, deep-set brown eyes unabashedly looked him over and took renewed assessment as he approached. Adam struggled to keep his contempt and loathing to himself.

“You look like hell. Something wrong?” Sederholm asked, trying to sound high-handed.

The marbles-for-brains twenty-two-year-old was leagues away from the kind of kid he’d been at that age, Adam thought. Circumstances had forced him to be a man early. Sederholm, he judged, would never be one no matter how old he was.

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing I can’t handle,” he told the snide senior, his tone firmly closing the door on any further speculation regarding the situation.

“Do I look worried?” Sederholm challenged. “Hey, as long as it don’t interfere with ‘business,’” he emphasized the word haughtily, “I don’t care if you’re juggling flying monkeys.”

“‘As long as it “don’t” interfere?’” Adam knew he should let the comment slide, but bad grammar always got under his skin, especially when uttered by someone who gave himself airs. “How much did you say your father was paying for your education? Because whatever it is, it’s way too much.”

Sederholm’s face darkened. “Like I don’t have better things to do than go sit in a lousy auditorium with a bunch of competitive geeks.” He puffed up his chest. “I’m making more money now than my old man ever did at my age—or when he graduated.”

Adam knew exactly what tuition was at the school. It was part of his background research. “Then why would you bother registering? The $40K this costs could be better spent.”

Sederholm shrugged, his large, bony shoulders moving carelessly beneath a sweater that would have set him back two months’ pay. “It’s his money and that’s what he wants to do with it.”

Adam saw through the blasé remark. “Can’t figure a way to siphon it off, can you?” he guessed, not bothering to hide his amusement.

“I don’t want to,” the student snapped at him, annoyed. “In case your tiny brain can’t figure it out, an Ivy League college campus is the perfect place to run my enterprise. As an undergraduate student,” he spread his hands out wide, “I fit right in.”

Adam saw a few obstacles to the senior’s “brilliant” plan. “You have to pass a few tests to stay in the game, don’t you?”

Sederholm snorted, more than a little pleased with himself. “I’ve got that covered. There’s this guy who, for the right price, can write an A-plus paper on any subject you throw at him.”

There were always plenty of those around, Adam thought. Even when he was going to school. “What about tests?”

The student’s smile was condescendingly smug. “I’ve got that covered, too.” He lifted his chin, a lofty look in his eyes. “Why all the questions?”

“Just curious.” Because that didn’t seem to satisfy his contact, Adam added, “When I grow up, I want to be just like you,” allowing only a drop of sarcasm to leak through.

Initially, the senior seemed to take the words as a compliment, but the frown that soon unfurled told Adam that the arrogant drug dealer realized he was being ridiculed.

“I can have you wiped off the face of the earth with a snap of my fingers,” Sederholm threatened him haughtily, snapping his fingers to illustrate.

Obviously, the little twerp had probably come close to OD’ing on classic gangster movies, most likely starting with Cagney and Bogart. For two cents, he would have loved to squash the snotty senior like a bug, but he knew bigger things were at stake here than just mollifying his temper—no matter how good it might feel at the time. Like it or not—and he didn’t—he needed this jerk to get hooked up to the head importer whose identity was still unknown to him.

“Before you snap again,” Adam told him, lightly catching hold of Sederholm’s wrist, “I’d like to place an order for my people.”

“Business before pleasure,” the cocky student declared with an obliging nod of his head. Adam released his hand, wishing he could be wringing Sederholm’s neck instead. “You know,” Sederholm said, the smile on his lips as genuine as the smile on a cobra, “one of these days, you’re going to push my buttons too hard.”

I’m counting on it, kid, Adam thought just before he gave the college senior a list of just how much he was looking to score.

Sederholm seemed properly impressed. “That’s almost twice as much as you bought last time.”

Adam made certain to appear unfazed. “Word gets around. You’ve got a good product.”

Sederholm nodded, preening. “Yeah, it’s damn good all right.” And then he frowned slightly. “But if you want that much of it, you might have to wait a little,” he warned.

“If this is too much for you to handle, I can always take my business—”

“I didn’t say it was too much for me,” Sederholm cut in angrily. “It’s just going to take a little longer to get it all together, that’s all.” Pausing, he was apparently trying to think, but there were times, like now, when the process appeared difficult for him. Undoubtedly, he’d been sampling “the product” again. “When do you need the stuff by?”

Adam eyed the student. “I was thinking now.”

Sederholm was taken aback. And then he laughed. It was a nasty sound. “Right, like I carry that kind of stash on me. What are you, crazy?”

Again, Adam shrugged nonchalantly. “Got a lot of antsy customers.”

Sederholm shut his eyes and scrubbed his hand over his face. “How’s tomorrow sound?”

“Not as good as today,” Adam replied without hesitation, “but it’ll do. Where and when?”

“I’ll call you,” he said cavalierly.

Adam resisted the urge to pat Sederholm on the head, the way he might have to a dim-witted toady who’d tried too hard. He didn’t want to put the kid off until the sting went down, and right now, the timetable was still unclear.

So instead, he smiled complacently and said, “You do that.”

Adam waited until he was back in his car, driving north on University Road and away from the forty-five-year-old college campus before he put in a call to his handler via his Bluetooth.

“Looks like the plan’s working,” he told the man. “Sederholm’s going to his source sometime between today and tomorrow.”

“The big fish?” he heard Hugh ask.

He only wished. “Right now, it sounds like the medium fish. But it’s only a matter of time. We keep doing business with him and we place an order big enough, medium fish is going to have to get in contact with big fish,” Adam theorized.

“And then we’ll reel them in.” He heard Hugh allow himself a sliver of optimism. “Meanwhile, you know what to do.”

“Yeah.” He knew what to do. Continue leading his double life—and deceiving Eve. The longer he stayed undercover like this, the greater the odds were that someone was going to get hurt. One way or another, it seemed inevitable.

“Something wrong?” He and Hugh had been together long enough for him to know that though it didn’t sound it, Hugh was concerned.

“I’m going to need a little time away from the job today,” Adam told his handler.

“All right,” Hugh allowed cautiously. There was leeway within their framework. “How little and is it going to get in the way of anything?”

“An hour, maybe less. Around one,” Adam added. “And no, it’s not going to get in the way of anything.” Just my conscience, he said silently. “I’ve got someone covering for me at the bookstore.” He didn’t bother adding that the woman, somewhere in her sixties, was a dynamo who had reorganized all his shelves the first week she was hired. “You’re going to have to get someone to keep tabs on Sederholm. The kid drives a 2009 silver Lexus SC 430 convertible. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem spotting him wherever he goes.”

Adam heard Hugh whistle. “Wish my mommy and daddy gave me a sixty-five-thousand-dollar car.”

“More like sixty-seven point six,” Adam corrected. Handing over the keys to that kind of vehicle to an immature brat seemed unfathomable to him.

“I can get Chesterfield to follow him,” Hugh told him. “Chesterfield likes surveillance work.”

Surveillance work was something he really hated. Though he considered himself tenacious, sitting in a car for hours on end drove him up a wall. He could literally feel life slipping through his fingers on a stakeout. He was a man who valued action, not stagnation.

“Different strokes for different folks, I guess,” Adam commented. “More power to him.”

“That’s what makes the world go around,” Hugh agreed. The next moment, the line went dead. Adam closed his cell phone. He was accustomed to Hugh’s calls. The handler wasn’t one to stand on ceremony. When he was done, he was done.

One o’clock had Adam hurrying down the corridor of the maternity ward. He carried a bouquet of red roses in one hand and a teddy bear sporting a pink bow and a pink tutu in the other. Neither, he knew, was exactly very original, but the offerings were the best he could do on short notice. Undertaking yet another life, bringing him to a grand total of three, was running him ragged.

Eve didn’t even know his real last name. He was still lying to her and calling it the truth. How was she going to handle that? he thought uneasily. How was she going to feel when she found out that all of this, the secondhand bookstore, the so-called life of a drug dealer, all of that was just a setup, a sham, a means to an end?

Why was he even wondering about that, he upbraided himself. He would be out of her life before that happened, not settling in for good.

If a part of him yearned for love and family, well, he would have to bank it down. He knew what he was signing on for when he volunteered for this kind of work. There wasn’t going to be a happy ending for him after two hours, when the credits rolled. This was real life and it was gritty.

When he reached Eve’s room, he heard voices coming from inside. Specifically, a male voice. Was that her doctor?

The moment he opened the door, Adam knew the small, trim, older man, dressed in tan slacks and a dark blue sports jacket, was not a doctor. Doctors were given to scrubs and lab coats, not expensive suits he was fairly certain came from a high-end shop. Despite the unseasonably warm weather, the man wore a tie. The tidy Van Dyke gray beard he sported made him look old enough to be her grandfather. But Adam knew she didn’t have one.

Who was this man?

Adam cleared his throat, crossed the threshold and gave the door a little push with his elbow, closing it behind him. When Eve looked his way, he said, “Hi.”

Everything inside of her lit up before she could tell it not to. Why didn’t she know better?

“Hi,” she answered. Her eyes strayed toward the bouquet. There were at least a dozen and a half roses swaddled in green and white tissue paper with sprigs of baby’s breath tucked in between the blossoms. “Are those for me?” Eve prodded when Adam made no effort to give her the bouquet.

“Well, they’re not for me,” the man on the other side of her bed observed. “For one thing, this young man had no way of knowing that I would be here.”

“They’re for you,” Adam murmured, feeling damn awkward as he almost thrust the bouquet at her. This was a bad idea, he thought. He should have realized that she’d have company. She was far too outgoing a woman not to.

“They’re lovely,” she said, inhaling deeply. They were the fragrant kind, her favorite type of roses.

Adam could feel steely gray eyes regarding him for a long moment, obviously assessing him.

“And you are?” Eve’s dapper companion finally asked as he passed the man while crossing to the sink. Opening the cabinet below, Adam took out a pink pitcher and filled it with water, then brought it over to Eve. Only once he deposited the bouquet, stripped of its tissue paper, into the pitcher and placed it on her table did he answer the man’s question. “Adam. Adam Smythe.”

The look on the older man’s gaunt face seemed to say that he knew better. “Of course you are,” he said with the air of man humoring someone of far less mental acuity. “Well, Adam Smith—”

“Smythe,” Adam corrected, giving it the standard British pronunciation.

“Sorry, Smythe,” the older man amended, “I’m Josiah Turner.”

Adam’s eyes widened and he looked at Eve. “That’s Josiah Turner?”

Until that moment, she’d forgotten that she’d referred to Josiah as the man she was currently involved with. Eve pressed her lips together. “I was in labor. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

Josiah’s voice warmed as he turned toward Eve. “I’ve known Eve since she was a little girl. I’d bring my dogs in to be treated by her father and Eve would be there, soaking up everything her father did like a sponge. I knew she’d be a good veterinarian even then.” The steely eyes narrowed as Josiah shifted his focus back to him. “And how do you know her?”

Adam had no idea how much or how little Eve wanted him to admit, so he kept the narrative vague. “I met her when she came into my bookstore in Santa Barbara. She was looking to buy a first edition Mark Twain for her father. I had an original copy of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Just yesterday I ran into her again.” Adam looked at Eve. “Small world.”

Josiah obviously had another take on the events. “You were stalking her?”

The accusation, politely worded, stunned Adam. “No,” he denied vehemently. Who was this man?

Josiah didn’t seem particularly convinced or contrite. Instead, his shoulders shifted in what constituted a minor shrug.

“My mistake.” However, he gave no indication that he was ready to move on to another topic. “So you both just happen to transplant yourselves to the same city—or are you here on a visit, Adam?”

Adam felt as if he was being subtly grilled. “I relocated my shop.”

“Interesting,” Josiah commented. “And what is your shop called?”

“New Again,” Adam told him.

Josiah nodded. “I must look you up when I get the chance. As it happens, I like first editions myself. Of course,” he slanted a glance toward Eve, and Adam noted that the older man’s look softened considerably as he did so, “I’m old enough to have been around for a great many of these books when they were first editions.”

“You’re not that old, Josiah,” Eve insisted with a warm smile.

The man leaned forward and patted her hand. “You have no idea how old I really am, my dear. It’s a state secret—and I intend to keep it that way.” He took her hand in his. “Since you have a visitor, I’ll take my leave now. But I’ll be back tonight. Call me if there’s anything special I can bring you when I return.” He kissed her hand, then released it as he straightened. The smile on his face vanished as he regarded Adam. “Adam,” he acknowledged with a nod of his head, and with that, moving with considerable grace and agility, Josiah Turner made his way to the door.

Adam watched the door close behind the man. “That’s quite a character. Is he a relative?”

“In name only.” When Adam looked at her quizzically, she explained, “When I was a little girl, I thought he was my father’s uncle so I called him my great-uncle. He’s a very sweet man. He had a daughter, but she’s married and living out of the country. England, I think. I’m the only ‘family’ he has, if you don’t count Lucas.”

“Lucas?”

“His driver. Actually, Lucas is more of an assistant slash companion, although I doubt Josiah would call him that.”

“How did he know you were in the hospital?” Adam asked, rearranging the roses so that they were more even. He had a thing about symmetry.

“I forgot he had an appointment this morning,” she said ruefully. “Annual shots for his Doberman, Edgar. When he found Vera there instead of me, he asked her where I was and she told him that Brooklyn arrived early. He brought the baby a present.” She’d assumed that the old man would, but she hadn’t been prepared for what the gift turned out to be. She glanced down at the card Josiah had brought. “I’ve got to find a way to make him take it back.”

Eve didn’t strike him as the type to refuse a gift. Doing so would most likely offend the man and that didn’t seem like something she would be willing to do.

“Why? What is it?”

Instead of telling him, Eve took the card out of its envelope and opened it. She held up what had been tucked inside the card.

Taking it from her, he turned it around. It was a check. A rather large check. Adam looked at her incredulously. “He gave you a check for twenty thousand dollars?”

What kind of man just hands over a check for that amount of money?

She nodded, taking the check and putting it back into its envelope. For now, she put it into the drawer of her side table. It made her uneasy just looking at it. “It’s the tuition to an exclusive nursery school,” she told him. “He told me he had a friend who could get her placed near the top of the waiting list.”

Adam looked at her sharply.