Harlequin Superromance January 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Everywhere She Goes\A Promise for the Baby\That Summer at the Shore (37 page)

No matter how cold Karl's eyes had looked as he'd informed her she no longer had any secrets, she couldn't be the type of person to hurl herself off into the distance with no plan.

Her more immediate problem was that she'd left her keys in the apartment, which she had meant to do so that she couldn't convince herself her behavior was stupid and return to Karl's. She'd been so driven by her shame and anger that she'd purposely made it impossible for herself to retreat without anyone noticing she'd been reckless. If she wanted back in the apartment, she'd have to ask the odious doorman to let her in.

Or sit in the apartment lobby with all her bags again—another humiliating option.

She had flicked on her blinker to get on the highway headed in the correct direction when she noticed the light glowing on the name of her current highway through the dark—Stevenson Expressway.

Mrs. Milek, the Mrs. Milek who deserved the title, lived off the Stevenson. Karl had taken Vivian near here for the family dinner. Mrs. Milek didn't like her, would probably be happy the marriage was going to fail, but she would also probably give Vivian a place to sit until Karl got off work and announced what he planned to do with her. Mrs. Milek's open suspicion was preferable to the doorman's smarmy obsequiousness. At least Mrs. Milek was honest.

Moving from one mostly white western town to another mostly white western town had taught Vivian that she preferred the children who were hostile to the ones who asked, oh-so-politely, if her dad was the cook at the Chinese restaurant—every western town, no matter how small, had one. Then they snickered, “I didn't know Chinese people did anything but work in restaurants,” to their friends while pretending they thought she wasn't listening. Only they hadn't said “Chinese people.”

Vivian didn't like thinking about either of those two types of kids because it did a disservice to the vast majority of her classmates for whom she was only ever “the new girl” and who never got to know her because she always moved before she stopped being the new girl. For whatever reason, her father had managed to keep himself out of trouble for her last two years of high school, and she'd actually made the leap from “the new girl” to “Vivian.” Even after he gambled away her college fund, they'd stayed in Jackpot so she could graduate from high school with friends.

After a couple wrong turns and one minor skid, Vivian found the house she was looking for. The lights in the living room were on, and the television flickered through the curtains. She sat in the car trying to convince herself that driving from Chicago to Reno was a good idea, then shook the nonsense out of her head and marched to the front door. When no one answered the bell, Vivian knocked. Still no one answered. It felt as though somebody was in the house, and a car was even in the driveway. Vivian looked at the clock on her phone, then pounded on the door. When no one answered after two minutes, she tried the knob. The front door was locked, so she went around to the side entrance.

“Mrs. Milek?” she called through the door as she eased it open. “Mrs. Milek, are you here?”

Canned laughter floated through the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. She followed the laughter, hoping to find Mrs. Milek engrossed in the television or on the phone with one of her children and simply ignoring the door.

The first thing she saw was a pool of coffee seeping into newish beige carpeting. Then she saw a coffee mug. The sound of vomiting rolled from the hall into the living room.

“Mrs. Milek?” Vivian eased her way down the hall—not wanting to leave her mother-in-law if she was sick, though not willing to burst in on the woman while she was vomiting. “Are you okay? Mrs. Milek?”

“Who's out there?” The question came out in a huff.

“It's Vivian, Karl's wife.” Vivian risked Mrs. Milek's privacy to look in the bathroom. Her mother-in-law sat on a rug in front of the toilet, wiping her mouth with one hand and holding her back with the other. Vivian swallowed her first question—the answer to “are you okay?” was clearly “no.” Instead she asked, “Can I help?”

“It's just the flu.” Mrs. Milek's breath caught on the next words, like she'd been running a marathon rather than sitting on the floor. “A little rest and I'll be fine.”

Middle Kingdom had been adamant that every employee learn to recognize the signs of a heart attack and be able to provide bystander CPR or administer a defibrillator shock if needed. Nausea, back pain and shortness of breath were all signs of a heart attack. “Do you have chest pains?”

“No,” Mrs. Milek wheezed. “Not any longer. It's just the flu.”

“Mrs. Milek, I think you're having a heart attack. I'm going to call 911.”

“It's just—” the woman wheezed “—the flu.”

“If I'm wrong, they'll send you home. If I'm right, you need paramedics.”

When Mrs. Milek turned back to the toilet and lost any ability she had to argue, Vivian called 911. After Mrs. Milek was loaded in the ambulance, Vivian grabbed her mother-in-law's purse and dug out the house keys. She locked the door, then tried to call Karl at work. After leaving an anxious voice mail on some number in the inspector general's office that she hoped would get to Karl, she got in her car and drove to the hospital.

CHAPTER TWELVE

K
ARL
KNEW
THE
apartment was empty the moment he walked through the door. Despite the bird hopping from side to side in his cage—on the kitchen counter!—and whistling a greeting, his once-peaceful apartment felt devoid of life. He hung his coat and scarf in the closet, then grabbed a towel to dry the snow off his head.

“Vivian,” he called into the vacuum. He peeked in her room. He didn't expect an answer, but he also hadn't expected to see all of her stuff gone. The only thing left in the closet was one of the winter coats he'd bought her and the slight smell of jasmine. “Why did you leave the coat? What am I supposed to do with it?”

He looked by the front door, expecting to see her packed bags—perhaps she had taken a walk to clear her mind. But nothing was there.

Her aunt was on the other side of the country in a state where Vivian knew she couldn't find a job.

Where else would she go? He breathed concern—not panic, not yet—out of his chest. He'd said he would find her somewhere else to live. She was practical enough not to run off—she was pregnant! Resourceful, her father had called her.

She must be just on a walk.

Between the knitting and the cooking and the walks and the job applications, Karl had found her to be a doer, and she would be better served by
doing
her walk quickly and getting back to the apartment.

He walked into the living area and looked around. Then he looked behind the couch and chairs. No bags. There weren't bags near the dining table, in the kitchen, in his room or out on the balcony, either. The only evidence in his apartment that Vivian had ever been here was the coat in the closet, the bird on his counter and the smell of roasting meat in the kitchen.

She wouldn't leave the bird. Her father may have won that bird in some scheme or another, but she'd driven the bird across the country. It didn't matter that she'd had a destination in mind when carting the bird across five states and she might not have a destination now. Vivian held family dear, and the bird was family. She wouldn't leave the bird. Perhaps she was waiting in the lobby.

When he finally
exited the elevator in the lobby, Karl looked around for his wife. It would be some kind of slap in the face if she'd been sitting in the same seat where she'd originally waited for him, her bags piled at her feet. But the only person sitting in a lobby chair was a man—definitely not Vivian.

“May I help you, sir?”

Karl turned to face one of the building's doormen. “Phillip, I'm looking for my wife.”

“She left about three hours ago, in her car. I offered to help her with her bags, but she didn't seem to want my help.”

“She had all her bags?”

“Yes, sir. I think so.”

“Thank you for the information and for offering Vivian help with her bags.” He turned to walk away, but thought better of it. “Phillip?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Ask management to see to those elevators. The ride from my floor to the lobby was inexcusably slow.”

“Of course, sir.”

The maddeningly slow elevator ride from the lobby to his apartment gave him plenty of time to consider his next option. A note. Vivian wouldn't have driven off without leaving a note. Despite cheating and casinos and her wastrel father, Karl believed her when she said the baby was his.

His words had been said in anger, not in truth.

He also believed that she thought his role in the baby's upbringing was important—and not just for financial reasons. She wouldn't have cut him out entirely. And there was the stupid bird to care for. If she didn't leave a forwarding address, she would've at least left instructions for the damn bird.

He kept calm and refused to hurry through the door and into the apartment to find the note—it would be there, next to Lucky or whatever that bird's name was.

Except it wasn't. It wasn't next to the birdcage, under the birdcage or even in the birdcage. Karl threw his tie over his shoulder and got down on his hands and knees to look on the floor. The note wasn't under the bar stools. He went around into the kitchen. It wasn't on the kitchen floor, either.

He was exhaling trepidation—still no need to panic yet—when his cell phone rang. “Vivian,” he said, not bothering to check the number on the screen. “Why did you leave me the bird?”

“Karl Milek?”

Karl vaguely recognized the male voice on the other end of the line. “Who is this?”

“It's Jan. You know...”

“Officer Czaja, what can I do for you?” An image of a ten-year-old boy following his sister Tilly around the neighborhood flashed in Karl's mind. Until he'd run into Jan's mother at Healthy Food proudly showing off a picture of her son in his police uniform, Karl hadn't known the boy existed anywhere other than within spitting distance of his youngest sister.

“I wasn't sure if you knew, but Makowski heard it on the radio. Your mother's in the hospital.”

* * *

T
ILLY
, D
AN
,
M
ILES
and Renia got to the hospital at almost the same instant Karl did. They all stopped short in the hospital waiting room as none of them had expected to see Vivian sitting in a chair, her head in her hands.

“What are you doing here?” Karl asked.

She looked up at him, the normally warm undertone of skin a deathly white. “I came to the hospital after your mom left in the ambulance.”

“That's not what...” Karl stumbled to a halt. He normally asked the exact question he wanted an answer to. “How did you know she was in an ambulance?” Only that wasn't the question he wanted to ask, either.

Nothing about this scene made sense. Karl wanted to go back to this morning when he and Vivian were riding a wave of happy family over rice porridge. “You disappeared.”

“What Karl means to say—” his sister Renia shot Karl a dirty look before continuing “—is that we are wondering how Mom is doing.”

“I don't know very much.” Vivian's gaze traveled over the group before settling on Karl. “I called 911 because I thought she was having a heart attack. I don't know how long she'd been in the bathroom. The coffee on the floor was still warm.”

Karl couldn't parse that statement in any way that made sense, his confusion overriding any feelings of fear for his mother. And being confused was easier than worrying about his mother.

“The doctors told me it was a heart attack, but they should be out soon with more details.”
That
sentence made sense. Karl's heart clenched.

As if on cue, a doctor came into the waiting room and headed directly for Vivian. “Mrs. Milek?”

Hearing his wife called by his mother's title while she lay in an unknown state somewhere in this gargantuan hospital made the situation seem even worse. The doctor could be coming out to tell him he was an orphan. His child might never know his—her?—grandmother or get the chance to make a lamb cake at Easter.

Karl might be parentless. The University of Chicago Hospitals were supposed to be the best in the city for cardiac care, but even the best doctors made mistakes sometimes. His anger rang through his ears at that thought. If one of the doctors made a mistake with his mother, he'd make sure they paid for their error.

He was still too young to go to a parent's funeral, even if he'd already been to his father's.

Vivian's talking broke through the fog. “I'm just the daughter-in-law. Her kids are here now.”

The doctor blinked a few times before shifting to include the rest of the family without excluding Vivian. “Your mother had a heart attack. We've done an angioplasty and inserted a stent. She'll need to stay in the hospital tonight for observation, but she can go home tomorrow, Thursday at the latest. She'll also start receiving some lifestyle instruction about weight loss and exercise, and it's important that she follow those instructions after discharge.”

My mother is alive.
His heart didn't unclench, but at least he began breathing again.

Everyone started talking all at once, asking if she'd be able to go back to work, the risk of another heart attack, if she'd need a nurse at home and how she'd come to have a heart attack. Karl didn't know which questions were his and which were asked by his siblings and their partners. Each question was asked at least three times by different people.

Vivian's soft voice broke through the din. “When can we see her?”

Karl stopped midquestion to look at his runaway wife, who was avoiding his gaze.

“She's sleeping now,” the doctor replied, “and will probably sleep through the night, but you can see her if you want. She'll be able to receive visitors in the morning.”

The entire family turned as one unit to follow the doctor and assure themselves their mother was still alive.

Karl didn't speak to Vivian at all as they were led through sterile hospital hallways to view their sleeping mother, back through more hallways to fill out paperwork, back through a few more hallways to get to the hospital parking and finally through the cold, dark garage.

He walked Vivian to her car, calmed by the fact that she was still in Chicago. The sheer relief that his mother was alive overpowered his uncertain feelings about Vivian for the time being.

He'd stood at his mother's bedside with the din of the hospital thrumming around him and thought about the
almost
adult-size coffin that his brother, Leon, had been buried in. But every time the panic at the death of another family member started to overtake him, he'd get a whiff of Vivian's jasmine perfume. The exotic scent grounded him in the present. His mom was not dead, she was sleeping. She would wake up and the doctors said she would be back at work within a week or two. His grandmother's funeral would continue to be the last family funeral he'd been to.

As he watched Vivian unlock her car door, he wanted to reach out and grab her hand, to feel the warmth of her dexterous fingers and to know his future shared the lifeblood that pumped through her veins. His mother was in the hospital, but the present still had hope.

* * *

V
IVIAN
BEAT
THEM
all to his mother's and was unlocking the door to the kitchen when Karl pulled into the driveway. Without jasmine clouding his brain he'd had fear to muddle his emotions and he got out of the car angry.

“What in God's name were you doing at the hospital?” he yelled up the driveway as he walked to her. “I get home, expecting to find you waiting for me, and instead I find that stupid bird, no note and a call from some neighborhood cop saying my mom was in the hospital.” His fears were exploding out of him, and years of practice at showing the world only the face he wanted it to see couldn't stop the outburst. If she cared she didn't show it, she just unlocked the side door with his mother's keys and let herself into the house. “Just as I'm thinking you've driven off to God only knows where, I find you sitting in a hospital waiting room, having been at my mother's house when she had a heart attack.”

His wife's eyes were drooping and her face was drawn when she sank into one of the kitchen chairs. “By the time I realized I hadn't left you a note about Xìnyùn, I'd changed my mind about leaving.”

Karl walked over to the sink, thought about what she'd said and pushed off the counter.
She was only going to leave a note about the bird?
When he got back to the table, he was too angry to sit. “Leaving to go where?” he asked, still hoping her answer would be the grocery store.

“Nevada. I was on my way to my aunt.”

“You were on your way to Nevada and the only note you were going to leave was about the bird?” His clenched jaw meant the words barely made it past his lips.

“Well, I...”

“You didn't think I'd want to know where you were going and, you know, about the baby?” How was he supposed to be able to find her if she only left a note about the bird, with no indication of where she was going? Did she even know if her aunt would take her in? He was going to find a place for her in Chicago, just not in his apartment, where he could smell her and she could drive him crazy.

“I think Aunt Kitty would have taken me in.” She looked bewildered and Karl didn't know if it was because of his anger or the stupidity of her near cross-country drive. He didn't really care.

“You were going to drive across the country based on the uncertainty of the verb
think?
”

“And I was going to let you know when I got there. I wasn't going to keep information about Jelly Bean from you.”

“Jelly Bean?” Tilly's voice asked. Karl looked up to see Tilly, Dan, Renia and Miles crowded in the kitchen doorway.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to know there's a baby,” Tilly said, her face radiating the innocence only youngest siblings could achieve.

“Does Mom know?” Renia asked.

“No,” Karl growled. “Mom doesn't know. Vivian didn't want her to know.”

“It's bad luck to tell people before the third month,” Vivian said, defensively.

“I'm going to be an aunt,” Tilly exclaimed, before glancing at Renia. “Again. I'm going to be an aunt again. How far along are you?”

“Seven weeks.”

The room was silent as they did the math. Karl had avoided all questions about how he and Vivian met and got married, but everyone in the room knew he'd gone to Las Vegas alone for a conference and now everyone knew Vivian had gotten pregnant sometime during that week. A month later he'd been introducing her to people as his wife when nary a soul had met her before.

“Miles?” Renia asked her husband. “Why don't you look as surprised as the rest of us?”