Butterfly Cove (15 page)

Her hands opened and closed and her body filled with tension. “It’s not about our vows. At least it’s only a little about that. Although your family scares the hell out of me.”

“They scare the hell out of me, too, honey. That’s why I’m counting on having you around. Between the two of us, we’ll battle them back.”

Jilly didn’t want to, but she laughed. He could always make her laugh, even at the worst of times. It had been her first clue that she was in love with him.

“I’m scared, Walker. Really scared,” she whispered.

He ran a hand through her hair, hating what she would say next but knowing that there was no more time to delay. “Then tell me. Did the doctor tell you something? Your lab tests and cardio scans...”

Walker prayed her heart condition had not worsened. They had both been rigorous, following all the doctor’s orders. But he knew Jilly had been stressed over the repairs of the Harbor House and worrying about her friend.

He was furious that he had not seen the signs earlier. “Tell me,” he said roughly.

“I’m not sure I can. I never thought...” She closed her eyes and then her hands clenched on his shoulders. She blinked back tears. “This is a different test. I went to see the doctor last week, but not about arrhythmias or problems with my blood pressure,” she said in a voice that shook.

Walker felt another blinding wave of relief. If it wasn’t her heart, they could deal with it. They could pull through anything. He wasn’t going to let her escape from the future he had planned for both of them and the joy he was going to bring her.

But he gave her time to tell the story in her own way. She was stubborn and independent; Walker wouldn’t have it any other way.

Jilly looked up, meeting his gaze with eyes that shimmered from unshed tears. “Okay, here it is. I didn’t want to screw this up. But I think I did.” She gnawed her lip mercilessly, never looking away from Walker’s face. “Because this test that I took left no question. I’m pregnant.”

* * *

W
ALKER DIDN’T MOVE
. His body seemed frozen. Jilly couldn’t pick up any expression in his face.

This was bad, she thought. Really bad. He was as shocked as she had been.

Panic hit her in a wave and she shoved hard at his chest, desperate to be free. Desperate to avoid the rejection and the disapproval at this huge change in their relationship.

Walker’s hands curved around her wrists and tightened. “You’re...pregnant?” He shook his head a little. “You’re going to have a baby?”

“That’s what the word means. When you’re pregnant a baby is involved,” she snapped. She gave another angry twist, elbowing him in the chest.

Walker didn’t even seem to notice. He frowned, staring at her face. One eyebrow rose. “I don’t understand. We’ve been careful about that. We both agreed this wasn’t the right time.”

Jilly closed her eyes, trying to stay calm. “Yes, we’ve been careful. All except that one time in Santa Barbara. We went up so I could look for new produce sources, and we stayed at that little bed-and-breakfast near the beach. It was romantic. Secluded.” She looked away, her voice flat. “And I screwed up.”

“You screwed up how?”

“It was supposed to be the last day of my cycle. You know how they mark those pill boxes?”

“Not exactly. But I know you always take one. What went wrong?” He sounded confused, in a fog.

“What went wrong was I thought I’d taken one, but it had jiggled loose somehow. I found it today in the bottom of my purse. One pill that I missed. Oh, Lord, I can’t believe this is happening,” she whispered.

“We missed one pill. Now you’re pregnant.” Walker took a long, rough breath. “We’re pregnant,” he said slowly. “With a baby.” His voice broke.

Jilly looked up, stunned to see the emotions that filled his eyes. He turned her wrists in his hands and brought them up to his mouth, kissing the line of burns of her latest kitchen mishap. “Do you have any idea how this makes me feel?”

“Angry? Worried? Betrayed by a calculating female who wants her hands on your money?”

Walker’s fingers slid over her mouth, stopping the anxious flow of words. “Overwhelmed. Amazed. Delirious,” he said. The confusion was vanishing from his face.

Jilly was pretty sure she saw unmistakable joy replacing the confusion. “You’re not angry or worried?”

“Hell, no, I’m not angry. I’m dazed. I feel like a tank just ran over me and then backed up and ran over me again. But I should be used to that by now. Living with you, I feel like a tank runs over me at least once a week.”

Any other woman would have been angry at the reference, but Jilly gave in to laughter. To tell the truth, she found the reference flattering. “And you don’t blame me? You don’t think this is some kind of weird manipulative thing I’m doing to get you tied up with access to all that money your family has?” It was only partly a jest. Other people had whispered those things within her hearing. Jilly had to face the possibility, for both of them.

“That does get me mad. You can do a lot better than me. You had an offer from a billionaire, as I recall.”

“It wasn’t an offer of marriage,” Jilly said dryly.

Walker shrugged. “Pretty close. And as for all our so-called Hale billions, the money is so tangled up in trust funds that you’d have to be a very patient woman to want me for financial gain.”

“So you’re not mad?” Jilly persisted, needing to hear him say the words. Otherwise she wouldn’t be free of the terrible fear that had hit her at the first symptoms of pregnancy. “I need to be completely sure, Walker. If you have any second thoughts—”

His laughter cut her off. He gripped her hard and swung her round the room, their bodies locked tightly. “I don’t have a single second thought, honey,” he said roughly, kissing her neck and then her mouth. “In fact, I take it as a sign. This is where we’re meant to be. We’ve been so careful. If this could still happen, I think somebody way more important than we are had a hand in it.”

Jilly smiled slowly. “You mean your old commanding officer? Or maybe your father?”

“Not either of them, and you damn well know it. The only thing that makes me angry is your waiting to tell me. Because you thought I would be angry at the news.” He lifted her face to his. “I’m over the moon. We’ll say our vows again whenever you want. A small, official ceremony, just between you and me. We don’t even need to tell anyone. We can have our reception that we promised my family after that. That way you can delay all the planning.”

“Technically, we’re already married. Remember?”

“But I want to do it again, Jilly. For real, fully committed to the decision. I think you’d like your close friends to be there this time, too.”

Jilly laughed quietly, sliding her face against his warm chest. He knew her so well. And now she knew he was holding back nothing. He really was thrilled by the idea of a child.

She swung around, frowning. “But there’s another problem, Walker. I’ll make the world’s worst mother. I don’t have a nurturing bone in my body. I’ll mess up playdates and teach this baby bad language. I’m going to screw this all up,” she said, closing her eyes, feeling the burden of a thousand worries and insecurities.

Wise man that he was, Walker didn’t laugh. He simply slid his hands into her hair and held her. “Whatever problems that come, we’ll tackle them together, honey. We’ll make it work. We’ll make it work amazingly well.”

He looked down at her, frowning. “Are you sick? Any nausea—that morning thing?” He looked uncomfortable.

Jilly snorted. “Not a bit of it. I’m eating like a horse. That was the first thing that cued me something was up. In fact, I’ve got a ravenous desire for lasagna right now.”

“Whatever happened to pickles and ice cream?”

“I’m thinking jalapeños and ice cream.” Jilly’s eyes brightened. “Actually, I’m thinking of a whole line of specialty items for pregnant women. Healthy food that won’t upset their stomachs. Something they can eat even if they don’t feel like it.”

“Jalapeños?” he said dryly.

“That’s for
me,
not for the public. You know how I love peppers.” Her hand opened, gently cradling the line of her slender stomach as if she could already imagine the new life growing there. “Something tells me this child is going to love chiles as much as I do. But I’m thinking low-fat recipes with high fiber and lots of taste.”

“I’ll go heat up some lasagna for you.” Then his eyes darkened as Jilly’s fingers slid down his chest and opened the snap of his jeans. He was half-soaked, his pants wet from when he had followed her into the shower.

And there was no mistaking the hunger in Jilly’s eyes as she slid her fingers under the wet denim and found his hard response.

“The lasagna can wait,” she whispered. Her fingers circled and traced. “I want you right here. I want us to remember this.”

He cut back an oath as Jilly’s fingers tightened, overwhelming his reason and control.

The way she always did.

They fell in a sprawl of hot, hungry skin and linked fingers, reason swept away by need. Walker tried to wait, but Jilly wouldn’t let him, pressing her body to his. Around them the old Harbor House seemed to sigh, creaking with age and memories and something that might have been peace.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

O
LIVIA BARELY SAW
her friends over the next week. Jilly was busy testing new recipes, and Caro was preparing for her husband’s return from Afghanistan. Grace and Noah were back in town but had barely spoken to anyone. Noah had three more days before he had to return to work in San Francisco, and it was clear they were hoarding every minute together. Grace’s friends wouldn’t have considered intruding on their privacy. Meanwhile, Olivia continued to search through her father’s boxes, papers and closets, as the last private detective had advised her.

She had called the management office of the condominium Sawyer Sullivan had maintained in Seattle, but there had been almost nothing in the condominium when it was sold three months before his death.

There had been no record of any storage units, bank accounts or deposit boxes in Seattle despite all her searching.

Another dead end.

She tried all the local banks along the coast, thinking he might have had accounts in several places.

Again it was a dead end.

She had checked the local post office to see if he had rented a postal box. No luck there either.

With her options running out, she turned her focus to the house itself. There were dozens of possible hiding spaces in a big building like this one. Olivia checked each wall, searching for signs of new paint or repaired wood that might conceal a recent addition to cover a wall safe or hiding place.

She didn’t know why she was following this train of thought, but instinct whispered that if there was any answer, it would be here, in the grand house her father had loved so much.

For Sawyer Sullivan this house had always represented status, power and security. In her search, Olivia found a tangle of old documents that gave her clear signs her father had been failing in the last year of his life. But there was no record of any new bank accounts or any sign of the items missing from her grandmother’s estate.

Olivia knew she couldn’t keep the sad state of her finances hidden much longer. There were taxes to pay and her car payment was due. Worst of all, her father’s banker told her that a number of people in town had approached him discreetly, indicating that Sawyer Sullivan had owed them money.

It was all turning worse than Olivia had thought possible.

As the days passed, she opened every box in the attic and even checked for storage spaces under the floorboards. Something told her that she needed to understand her father’s state of mind in those last months of his life. He hadn’t been clear in his mind and he might have been becoming a little paranoid.

Olivia almost felt sorry for him; the letters no longer showed an aloof, confident businessman. In these pages Olivia saw an old man fighting to stay in control, afraid of something.

She sank into a pool of sunlight in the dusty attic, watching the breakers roll in far out at sea, thinking about growing up on this island she had always loved.

As she was growing up, Sawyer Sullivan had always made it clear he had wanted a son, not a daughter, and if he had to have a daughter, she should have been smarter and prettier than Olivia could ever be. And one thing was painfully clear. He had never trusted Rafe and never wanted him around Olivia.

He had never suspected how close the two had become.

But that was old history. Olivia shoved away the past and turned her thoughts to the present. She had begun to put her life back together with the help of a therapist that Caro had recommended. Olivia accepted that her insecurities came from losing her mother very young and having a father who was both distant and demanding.

She refused to be a victim. She was moving on, whether she found the answers about her father or not.

Something glinted on the floor near her feet. Frowning, she leaned down and picked up a pile of old library books, stamped for resale. Her father must have purchased them after one of the fund-raising sales for the local library. They were a mix of Dickens, British history and modern paperback thrillers. Nothing significant there. Beside them was a stack of DVDs that he had never returned. When she shoved the DVDs aside, she saw a piece of metal caught in the molding at the bottom of the wall.

Why was a key pushed into the wood? It couldn’t have fallen, not back in a corner.

Her fingers shook a little as she dug at the key, which was wedged down into a crack in the molding. Olivia held it up into the light and read the number.

Summer Island Bank. Number 192.

A safe-deposit box?

Her father’s banker had told Olivia that he had an account there. After the funeral, she had filled out paperwork and they had opened the box.

All they had found were an old coin set and tax returns dating back ten years. Olivia was almost certain that the box number they had opened was different from this one. She frowned, thinking about what to do next. She needed to know if this box was current. If so, had it belonged to her father?