Killing Secrets (37 page)

Unable to deny her feelings and lacking confidence that anything would ever work out between them—she didn’t have the heart to hurt Evelyn, who’d given her so much—she said nothing. She was almost grateful when a physician entered room and ended the conversation.

“Ms.,” the man glanced at the clipboard in his hand, and frowned, “James. Ms. James, I’m the doctor assigned to Amanda’s case. Could we talk for a few minutes?”

Rachel reached out to Evelyn when the older woman began to rise. She took her hand, very comfortable with the woman who reminded her so much of her own mother. “Whatever you have to say can be said in front of Evelyn.”

The doctor nodded. “The nurse told me the man who’s been posing as your husband is, in fact,
not
your husband.” His scowl deepened. “I was informed you’re not Amanda’s mother either. Only someone with legal custody can sign admittance forms for her.”

“I have legal custody, Doctor,” Rachel said with confidence. It would take a court of law to deny her rights, dammit! “Amanda
is
my daughter.”

“I knew there had to be some confusion,” he said with a genuine smile. “For Amanda to have your rare blood type, she had to be your daughter.”

“But—” When she was artificially inseminated, Simon told her he would try to match the appearance of the donor mother to her as closely as possible, but down to the same blood type? Was that kind of accuracy even possible?

The doctor handed her the clipboard and asked her to sign the admission forms, forcing away her confusion. He explained Amanda’s injuries. “We want to keep a close eye on her for the next couple of days, which is why we’re admitting her.”

“Thank you, Doctor. I feel so much better knowing she’s not in immediate danger.”

“We’ll take good care of her.” He smiled. “This brings me to my next point. We do have a blood bank available, but we prefer to have a family member with Amanda’s blood type on call in case surgery becomes necessary. You may have the same blood type but you can’t be a donor. We wouldn’t put your baby at risk. Is there another family member we can talk to?”

She froze. “What did you say?”

“We’d like another family member—”

“No.”
Baby?
“What baby?”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“You’re pregnant.”

Rachel stared at the physician like he’d inexplicably grown two heads. “That’s not possible.”

He nodded. “When you came in, one of the first things we did was cross match your blood type and check for pregnancy. We can identify the presence of hormones in the bloodstream only a few days after conception now.” He consulted his clipboard. “We can conduct another test to verify the results, but according to your blood work, you are pregnant.”

“I-I—” Rachel glanced at Evelyn, counting back to the night Patrick had made love to her. It had been eight days since she’d learned lovemaking could be as spectacular and satisfying with the right man as she’d read in books, so the time frame was possible. But what about the battery of tests Simon had done when she and Greg were trying to get pregnant?

Simon told her the problem was hers, that she wasn’t fertile. Was it all just a monumental mistake or…oh, God, had Simon lied? Why would he do such a horrible thing? He knew how empty she’d felt, how devastated she was when he broke the news to her. She’d cried so hard it had taken Greg forever to calm her dow—

Greg. Her con artist, ex-husband. This was his doing. She knew it!

Evelyn picked up her limp hand. “Rachel, sweetie, are you okay?”

No. She wasn’t okay. If she was right, Greg had perpetrated a con on
her
, his own wife!
From the day they’d met, when he “accidently” ran into her on the Stanford campus her junior year? From the beginning of their marriage?

Rachel was pregnant before she discovered what kind of man she’d married, and then it was too late. She quickly learned Greg would con his own mother if there was a profit in it for him. He’d been prepared to do whatever it took to get at the James family coffers, even lie about her not being Amanda’s mother.

Her pulse hitched. If she was truly Amanda’s mother, that meant Greg was the infertile one. Simon had lied and helped Greg use Rachel’s belief in her infertility to control and manipulate her. Is that why Simon helped her to escape California six months ago, given her money to get help for Amanda? He’d felt guilty for his part in the con? All those years, everything she’d endured to keep Greg happy to shield Amanda from her father…the memories raced through her head, made her insides turn cold. She placed her hand protectively over her stomach.

“Ms. James? Are you feeling dizzy? Nauseous?” The doctor approached the side of the bed and took her wrist in his hand.

Staring at Patrick’s mother—her baby’s grandmother—a whole new array of thoughts flashed into her head. She’d promised Patrick it was safe to make love without protection
. She was carrying his baby.
She was returning to Dallas.
Would he let her go if he knew?
How could she tell him?
He didn’t love her
.

She blinked. “I-I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just surprised.” She summoned a smile for the doctor. “To answer your question, no, there is no one else with Amanda’s blood type available. When can I see my daughter? “

Her daughter!
Eager to see Amanda, she tossed off the sheet and tried to swing her legs over the side of the bed. Searing pain ripped through her left ankle, reminding her it was badly sprained, about the same time the doctor tried to stop her. “Whoa! You’re not going anywhere until we get a secure bandage around that ankle. Then, we’ll see about wheeling you in to see Amanda. Okay?”

Reluctantly, Rachel nodded and watched the doctor depart, her thoughts flying in a hundred different directions at once
.

She was pregnant.

Amanda was hers.

Greg couldn’t take her little girl away. Ever.

No wonder he hadn’t followed up on his threats over the years.

She was so gullible.

She was having Patrick’s b-

Suddenly registering the silence in the room, she caught Evelyn staring at her middle. The woman looked up into Rachel’s eyes. “When will you tell Patrick?”

“Tell him what?” she prevaricated.

Evelyn’s left eyebrow rose. “You’re not going to tell me the baby belongs to someone else, are you? The night Ross and I came home, well, I wasn’t born yesterday, young lady. I can put two and two together, and I don’t think you’re the type to sleep around.”

You’re a slut, but a selective slut
. Is that what she was saying?

Rachel forced down an inappropriate urge to laugh and settled back into her pillow. She fiddled with the sheet beneath her fingertips. “I’m sorry,” she said to the woman her own mother had called friend, the same woman who’d provided Rachel with a bolt hole to escape Greg. “I don’t know what to say, Evelyn. I-I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“You think I’m upset that it did?” Evelyn shook her head. “I’m not. It’s about time someone special came along and made my stubborn son feel again. I’m glad it’s you he fell in love with.”

She did laugh then, but without humor. “Patrick doesn’t have those kinds of feelings for me.”

“He may not have said it, but he loves both you and Amanda. It’s so obvious Ross commented on his surly behavior this morning at breakfast. Said Patrick had better hurry up and resolve whatever was wrong between you two before he had to knock both of your heads together.” She nodded at Rachel’s surprise. “And that man has to be hit over the head with a two-by-four before ‘girly emotions’ impinge on
his
manly senses.”

Certain Evelyn was only trying to cheer her up, Rachel gave her a wan smile.

“So, tell me I’m going to be a grandma,” Evelyn said with a broad grin. “Say it out loud once and it will be easier to tell Patrick.”

“You’re going to be a grandma.” She wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. If Patrick did have feelings for her…no, she couldn’t think about “what ifs”. “Please don’t tell Patrick. Not yet. I’ll tell him when the time is right.”

Evelyn’s smile faded. “I don’t like keeping secrets, honey. They always seem to come out at the worst time and bite you in the fanny.” She sighed as if at a troublesome memory. “If Patrick finds out on his own, well, I don’t want to see either of you hurt.”

“It will only be for a few days,” Rachel said. “I have to, oh, please, forgive me, but I have to wrap my head around this news myself. I promise, I’ll tell him when the time is right.”

When that might be was negotiable because Rachel knew the revelation wouldn’t make a difference to her plans. She loved Patrick too much to trap him into a one-sided relationship. She’d be devastated if he demanded she stay because of the baby, and not because he loved her. He was too honorable to demand she get rid of the baby and, God help her, she could never give up the precious gift she carried inside her.

No. Despite what she’d just promised her baby’s grandmother, she was afraid there would be no “right” time to tear her heart to shreds.

~~~

Patrick paused outside the closed door where he knew Rachel and his mother were talking. It took every bit of his self-control not to march in and order his mother to leave so he could take Rachel in his arms. He longed to kiss her angry mouth until she forgave him. He needed to assure himself that she was okay. He wanted to tell her that Amanda spoke!

He could do none of those things. The petite woman that had thrown him out of Rachel’s room glanced over the nurse’s station computer at him, and he walked on. Slowly. Beyond the nurses’ station, he could see the door to Amanda’s room was ajar so, if he took his time, he could peek in on her. It might be only a glimpse, but he had to take a chance. He’d promised her he’d come back. If she was alone in the room, he would try to slip insi—

His air seized in his lungs. The room was empty. Amanda wasn’t lying in the bed where he’d left her.

You miscounted the rooms
. Convinced he’d made a mistake, he retraced his steps. No. This was Amanda’s room.

Pushing the door wide, he scanned every inch of the small space. No little girl. The male nurse he’d left her with was missing. He turned around to find the nurse hurrying from the nurse’s station in his direction. “Where’s Amanda?” he demanded before she reached him.

The woman stared up at him, her expression stern. “Sir, you’re not supposed to—”

Unable to shake the feeling something was desperately wrong, Patrick cut her off. “Where’s Amanda? I left her with one of you people,” he said. “Did she take a turn for the worse? Did they take her up to surgery? I don’t care if you think I have no rights, you have to tell me.”

“She’s right there, Mr.—” she hesitated when she glanced into the room behind him. Her forehead creased in perplexity. “They must have taken her up to Pediatrics,” she said slowly. “I didn’t see. I was talking to the father of the teenager brought in after your wife, I mean, Ms. James came in.”

“Check!”

He stalked behind her to the nurse’s station. He wasn’t encouraged when she pulled a chart from the stack—presumably Amanda’s—examined it, and muttered something before she picked up the phone. He listened to her side of several conversations as she tried to locate Amanda. With each call, his gut grew colder. He knew the little girl wasn’t in the hospital before the nurse hung up the phone and looked at him.

“Call security,” he ordered before he pulled his cell from his pocket.

He jammed it back in his pocket when he saw his brother and a uniformed police officer walk through the exterior ER doors. He met them and his father, who joined them from the waiting room. “You’re too late, Jack,” he said tersely. He wanted to tear into his brother. Jack had returned with his promised security in under an hour, but that didn’t matter. “Amanda’s gone, and her nurse is missing.”

Jack spat a virulent curse that prompted a gasp of shock from a woman in the nearby waiting room.

“Jackson!” Using his crutch, their father shepherded the group into a corner, away from listening ears. “Get a hold on yourself, Patrick,” he said, his free hand steady on his shoulder. “We’ll find them.”

His dad nodded toward the uniformed officer, peered at his badge. “Officer Glenn, go find out what you can from hospital security. Have them organize a search for Amanda and the missing nurse. They’re here. We just have to look.” He glared at the back of the departing officer.

Patrick didn’t often see his father rattled.
He didn’t believe Amanda was still in the building any more than he did.
“Rachel,” he said. “Someone has to tell Rachel.” She’ll be devastated when she realized how badly he’d screwed up. Again.

“She knows,” his mother said from his right. “Her ex-husband just called her cell phone with his demands. She’s getting dressed. I tried to stop her, but—”

~~~

Patrick spent the next fourteen hours arguing with Rachel, his brother, Jack, his parents, and the cadre of FBI agents who’d descended upon the hospital within thirty minutes of Greg Bishop’s phone call. Patrick’s objections were ignored by everyone. The only reason he was standing in his parents’ living room watching Rachel get outfitted with a listening device was because Jack ran interference for him with the FBI. The big surprise was that Rachel, after a brief conversation with his mother, agreed to let him stay.