Barefoot With a Bodyguard (33 page)

“Not completely.” His eyes, much the same shade of jade as his daughter’s, filled. “He made me believe he still cared about you, and I thought maybe it would be better for you.”

“
Dad
. Seriously?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Katie.”

“You told him where I was?”

“No, no. But, thinking back, there was one time we were talking in my chambers and I had to leave for a moment. He must have rifled my files.”

Gabe stood, not needing to be here for the rest of this father-daughter chat. Kate was going to ream her old man a new one, and it sounded like he deserved it. But Daddy was the client, so at least the error was on him and not Gabe. “I have my answers now. I’m out.”

Kate stood immediately. “Not without me. I need to see Alec.”

“Not happening.”

Her jaw dropped, and color slipped from her cheeks. “What do you mean?” Her eyes widened in panic. “Please tell me he’s not already gone. Please tell me you haven’t sent him somewhere with a new name.” Her voice cracked, and she put her hand on her chest. “Please.”

“Listen, it would be better if you—”

“Don’t tell me what would be better!” She practically launched herself at him, her eyes wild. “If one more goddamn man tries to tell me what he wants from me, what I should do, or what would be
better
for me, I will kill someone. And I know how.”

The judge stood. “Mr. Rossi, I insist you help my daughter. Don’t keep her from this man. She’s been pushed around by too many people.”

Gabe huffed a breath, considering all the implications. He could risk it. After all, he’d stuck the two of them in a villa and let them have at it. He should have guessed that something more than a casual friendship could boil up. And by the look in this woman’s eyes, it was way more than that.

“All right, I can take you to him tonight,” he said. “When it’s dark. But now, I’m going back to my office, and you and your dad are going to stay in this room, and no one is going to leave. I promise I’ll come and get you as soon as it’s dark.”

She nodded and sat back down in the chair. “Okay. Dad and I need to have a long talk anyway.”

Gabe left and made it halfway across the lobby before his cell vibrated again, this time with a call from his younger sister, who had what he hoped was a solution to a different problem.

“I got nothing,” Chessie said instead of hello when he answered.

“Nothing?” He pinched the bridge of his nose, slowing his step on the marble to listen to his little sister, his only hope of hacking into the encrypted files he’d stolen from Radio and TV Martí in Miami. “Hey, I thought I was talking to my sister. She can find anyone.”

She snorted at her family’s motto for her. “Not from what you e-mailed me,” Chessie said. “As I suspected, I might do better with source material. Can you send me something physical?”

And risk losing what might be highly sensitive, world-shifting material? “No, but I have the physical files on a drive.”

“Send it to me.”

“Not a chance, Chess. Come on down. Tell Vivi you need a vacation, and get your ass to Florida. Plan on staying for a while. I could really use you down here.”

He heard his sister sigh. “I can’t—”

“It’s that d-bag Matt, isn’t it?” he asked, driven by instinct and his profound knowledge of what made Chessie tick.

“I gave him the ultimatum.”

“And that always goes over so well with men.”

“He’s thinking about it.”

“Thinking about
what
?” Gabe shot back, his intense dislike for his sister’s on-again-off-again boyfriend firing through him. “What an incredible catch you are? How lucky he would be to lick the bottom of your overpriced stiletto? What it’s going to feel like when I kick the ever-loving fuck out of his empty head?”

She made a noise that might have been a laugh…or might have been a sob. “He’s not sure, is all.”

“Then why do you want him, Chessie?”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a single, thirty-year-old woman who wants a child?”

“Obviously not. But I know what it’s like to be a thirtysomething guy, so I’m here to tell you that chicks with your brains and looks are not found on every street corner.”

“Pffft. You’re my brother. You have to say that.”

It was true, but she was too tender to hear it right now. “Then just take a long weekend and come down here to help me. I have to read what’s in those files.”

“I did crack a little of it,” she said. “I thought you were done with Cuba.”

He swallowed hard. “Just curious about some people left behind,” he said.

“But after what happened at Gitmo, aren’t you, like, never allowed in the country again?”

He wasn’t going to put her in the position of knowing any more classified information than she already did. “Chessie,” he said softly. “Come down here and help me find someone, please. You can find anyone, remember?”

She huffed out a breath. “I’m going to see Matt one more time. Then we’ll see.”

Taking that as a yes, he hung up and headed back to his office.

*

“Six months?” The big Jamaican woman’s question pulled Robyn from thoughts that hummed along much like the golf cart she rode in on the way to a villa called Rockrose. “You’re tiny for six months. You need to eat.”

Robyn looked over at her, stilling the hand that, yeah, was always rubbing her belly. “I do my best.” She took a deep breath, and that turned into a hiccup.

“A boy with a lot of hair,” Poppy said as she turned the cart into an opening between tall bushes that hid another one of the expensive-looking vacation homes on the beach. “That’s the third time you’ve had the hiccups in the last two hours.”

“And that means it’s a boy?”

“That means it has hair and a lot of it. Does your baby daddy have thick hair?”

She sighed and looked away, closing her hand over the rail in front of the passenger seat to keep from rubbing her belly, a habit she found impossible to break.

“I have thick hair,” she said, gesturing toward the ponytail Poppy had made her wear.

“So you ain’t sayin’, or you don’t know?”

She bit her lip. “I know.” Poppy hadn’t been in the room when Alec and the other guy interrogated her, so she might think Robyn was just a slut. “His name’s Cole Morrow. He was my boyfriend.”

“Was?”

She shrugged.

“Are you keeping this child or giving it up for adoption?”

“I’m keeping him.” No foster homes, no adoptive parents, no miserable messes for her little boy. Robyn had grown up with a mostly missing drunk for a dad and mother more interested in getting high than anything else. Her child would be loved beyond reason.

“Fine, fine, that’s good.” But Poppy didn’t sound all that sure if it was good or not as she brought the cart to a stop and climbed out. Then she stood like some kind of warrior woman, hands on hips, fire in her eyes. “And I’ll help you.”

The offer was so sincere and unexpected and sweet that Robyn drew back. No one ever wanted to help her. Not really, not for no reason.

Poppy walked to the back of the cart, shaking her head. “All that hullabaloo today, and I never went down to the laundry and picked up my fresh towels. We can’t finish this last villa without a new set.”

“Why would you help me?” Robyn asked as she met the other woman at the back of the golf cart.

Poppy’s giant brown eyes flashed and then softened. “’Cause it’s the right thing to do. You need help, and the good Lord landed you in my lap, so I suppose He’s telling me to get to work on you.”

Robyn stood there, the heat blasting her, making a trickle of sweat roll from under her bra over her expanding belly. “I don’t believe in God,” she finally said, turning to the cart to grab the rags and mop, since Poppy wouldn’t let her even touch the buckets full of cleaning solutions.

“All the more reason He sent you to me.”

She snorted softly. “Trust me, Poppy, I’m not on God’s radar.”

“Well, you’re on mine, child, so don’t you be worrying about nothing now.”

She hiccupped in response, fighting a smile. “It doesn’t mean he has hair,” she told Poppy. “I hiccup when I’m tired.”

Poppy eyed her, then put a gentle hand on Robyn’s shoulder. “Can you drive the golf cart?” When she nodded, Poppy continued, “Go down to the resort building. You know where that is? In the way back, on the far side away from the beach, is the laundry loading dock. The towel truck is due in any minute, so you get a stack of fresh towels—I love ’em right off the truck—and put them on the cart, and come right back here. Will you do that for me?”

“Sure.” She walked by Poppy to get behind the wheel.

“An’ child?”

Robyn turned to her.

“Don’t you be talking to anyone about anything, you understand? Towels and back here. Can I trust you?”

Who would she talk to? Where would she go? For the moment, she was here, in this swanky resort with people who wanted to help her and asked for nothing in return. “I won’t, Poppy,” she promised. “You can trust me.”

A few minutes later, Robyn was rolling down the wide path that curved through the resort property, the deep blue water on her right, jungle-thick trees on her left, and sun bouncing off the palm fronds, making her feel like she was living in a postcard.

“The scenery certainly doesn’t suck, little dude.” She patted her belly and let out a noisy hiccup. Maybe he would have a lot of hair, she mused. Curly blond hair and light brown eyes like Cole’s.

The thought of her baby daddy, as Poppy had called him, made her heart drop hard into her stomach. She didn’t miss him, but driving down here, guilt had gnawed at her gut. A man had a right to know when he had made a baby.

But everyone else could tell when they looked at her now, so hadn’t Cole noticed she was fatter when he was at her apartment? Wouldn’t he ask? Wouldn’t he
want
to know if his girlfriend was going to have a baby?

Coming around the side of the building, she squinted into the afternoon sun to remember where she was supposed to go, when suddenly a large van pulled up to a loading dock in the back, the words Gulf Coast Industrial Laundry painted on the side.

The towel truck. She’d get a stack fresh and clean for Poppy and make her happy. Her heart swelled for a moment as she thought about the wonderful Jamaican woman who loved God and wanted to help Robyn. She was like a guardian angel.

Poppy would know what she should do, Robyn decided as she waited for the truck to park, climbing out of the cart so she could get the freshest of fresh towels. She’d tell Poppy about how guilty she felt and see if she had to call Cole and tell him the truth.

Was that best for the baby? What would help
him
the most in life? Those questions were the only ones that she asked herself, and had helped her make every decision she’d made since she’d realized she was pregnant. Maybe they hadn’t been the smartest decisions—like coming to Florida to find Alec. But that decision seemed to be working out okay in the end.

The driver was sitting in the front seat, on the phone, so Robyn went around to the back to wait for him near the loading dock when suddenly she felt someone come up behind her.

“Hey, Robyn’s Egg.”

What? She spun around and squinted into the late afternoon sun, because she really, truly wasn’t sure if she was imagining that Cole Morrow was standing two inches from her face. Fear and shock froze her. “Wha…what are you doing here?”

“I followed you here.”

He’d
followed
her? “Why?”

“You think I’d just let you leave me, Rob?” He reached around her and flipped open the back of the van. “Quick, hide in here.”

“What? Why?” She barely got the word out before he pushed her in and climbed after her, shoving her deeper into a mass of soft, fluffy towels, pulling the door closed behind him. “Cole, what’s going on?”

“You have to hide.” Cole was strong, a fighter with solid muscles and he easily got control of her, burying them both in a mountain of white, the overwhelming smell of laundry detergent suddenly making her feel sick.

“What are you do—”

He slammed his hand over her mouth. “Shut the fuck up,” he said. “Or I’ll hurt you.”

She tried to scream, but it was muffled under his hand, his fighter’s body easily holding her down. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t
breathe
. She tried to squirm and flail, but his grip got tighter, then his knee was on her stomach.

No, not there. Don’t hurt me there. The baby!
But she couldn’t scream any of that, because he’d smothered her mouth with his hand.

“How the hell did this open up?” A man’s voice made it through the barrier of white towels that hid them, then the doors slammed hard, and the back of the van went black.

Cole didn’t loosen his grip for a few seconds, but he finally did, moving the knee that terrified her so much.

“You’re coming with me,” he said in a gruff voice, his hand still over her mouth.

She shook her head, hard. “No.”

“Oh, yes, you are. You’re coming with me, Robyn Bickler, or I swear to God I’ll cut that baby out and drive this truck over it.”