Secrets Rising (8 page)

She pulled away from him with a small giggle and took his hand. "No, it can't wait. This is a very special dinner." She tugged him toward the kitchen.

"Uh oh. Is this another new recipe?" he teased. "Are we going to be up half the night with heartburn again? Maybe we better go upstairs first just in case we don't feel like it afterward."

"Oh, you! Stop that! Our steaks are under the broiler and they're going to burn if we don't get in there!"

"Steaks, eh? Hmm." His face took on a mock-pensive expression. "Okay. I guess I can pass up making love with my wife for a big, juicy steak."

Mary danced into the kitchen, Ben's hand clutched firmly in hers.

"Candles and wine, too! Omigosh! It's our anniversary, isn't it? Your birthday? My birthday?" he teased.

"Just sit down and pour the wine. Only half a glass for me." Mary gave him an enigmatic smile, then bent to turn the steaks.

She went back to the table, sat next to her husband and lifted her half-full glass. She'd planned every moment of this evening for over a year, but now a lump in her throat threatened to interfere with her rehearsed speech, the eloquent toast she'd planned to propose.

"Mar? Are you all right? Are you crying?"

Mary smiled though her eyes were moist. "No. Yes. Oh, Ben! We're having a baby!"

"A baby?" A look of wonder spread over Ben's face. He leaned around and touched Mary's stomach reverently. "Are you sure?"

Mary's heart swelled with love for this man and for the child growing inside her. "Yes, I'm sure. Doctor Wilcox called me with the results today. I had everything planned so carefully, how I'd tell you, what I'd say, but then I forgot everything and just blurted it out! I'm sorry. I wanted to do this right."

"I guess we can keep him. But I don't think we ought to make him wear that pink dress and those booties you've been crocheting."

"Nah. They're just a little black on one side." He took the broiler pan from her and set it on the stove top then turned her to face him. "For the second time, the first being when you said
I do
, you've made me the happiest man in the world. Right now, your hamburger casserole would even taste like gourmet food. Come on, Mother. Let's enjoy our steaks. You and Sharise need the protein."

Sharise
. The name of Ben's twin sister who'd died at birth, the name of his mother's dress shop. It thrilled Mary to know that Ben and his parents wanted to pass such a special name on to her baby, to give the child history and a place in a big, loving family. Her baby would never know the loneliness she'd known since her parents' deaths, the sense of belonging nowhere to no one. This baby would have lots of family to love her and keep her safe...her or him.

"Sharise or—" She broke off, choking on the name Ben had selected for a boy.
Charles
.

"Are you all right?" Ben asked, a bite of steak poised in midair halfway to his mouth, his brow wrinkled in concern.

"Of course. I just...I'm sorry about the steaks. I wanted everything to be perfect."

"The important things are perfect. I love you, you love me, and we're both going to love our baby more than anybody's ever loved a baby before since the world began. I can't wait to tell Mom and Dad. And Charles. I can just see his face when this kid wraps her tiny little fist around his thumb and calls him
Uncle Charles
. I don't think he had the best of families back in Ohio. This baby is going to be very spoiled with so many people adoring her."

For a fleeting instant an ugly thought reared up amidst all the happiness, but Mary quickly shoved it aside.

It was impossible.

No way could that one nightmare experience, that cruel torture that bore no similarity to making love, result in the miracle of a child, the ultimate gift of love.

"Yes," she agreed, her voice firm, "our baby is going to be spoiled rotten. That's the way it should be."

Chapter 7

Jake held the heavy wooden door open for Rebecca to enter the Smokehouse Barbecue, a block off the main street of downtown Edgewater.

They'd had breakfast together, visited Doris Jordan together, and now they were having lunch together. What's wrong with this picture?

For her sake if not for the sake of doing his job, he had to get rid of her. He couldn't let her start to depend on him, to need him when he had nothing to give.

Nor could he spend any more nights separated from her by nothing but a thin wall. Not after he'd seen what she slept in.

The small restaurant was crowded, but Jake located an empty table and guided Rebecca toward it with a gentle hand at the small of her back.

If you're so damned anxious to get rid of her, why do you keep touching her every chance you get?

She was as good with questions as that little voice in his head. He knew the answer but he wasn't about to tell her that he did it because he hadn't known what else to do with her after they left Doris Jordan's house, because she made him uncomfortable and a public restaurant seemed a good place to be with her.

"I guess." She unrolled her paper napkin and carefully laid out the cheap flatware. "We didn't learn anything from her."

"More than you realize. I told you before, detective work goes one inch at a time. Sometimes it goes by centimeters. It's tedious and time-consuming. That's why you pay me to do the work while you wait at home in air-conditioned comfort for my reports."

In the silence that lengthened at their table, the laughter and talking around them, punctuated by the clink of silverware on plates, seemed to grow louder. The ding of the bell announced another order was up.

Jake didn't like crowds, avoided them as much as possible, and this place was beginning to feel very crowded. When they'd first walked in, the air had felt cool, but that was compared to the noon heat outside. Now it seemed warm and suffocating, the sweet, spicy scent of barbecue overpowering in its tantalizing appeal. If Rebecca weren't with him, he'd get up and leave.

If Rebecca weren't with him, he probably wouldn't feel the need to leave.

The waitress returned with their drinks, and Jake took a long, soothing swallow of his ice-cold beer.

"Okay," Rebecca said, "so I missed whatever it is we learned from Doris Jordan because I'm not a skilled detective. Can I have my report now instead of waiting for you to leave a message on my answering machine in my air-conditioned home which I'm not in right now?"

Jake set his frosty mug back onto the table. "Whatever you want. You're paying the bills. Today we learned that your mother very likely came from an affluent family."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because Doris Jordan said that at one time having a dress with her label in it was considered special. She even compared her private label to Neiman Marcus. While she admitted that wasn't a completely valid comparison, any small shop with a private label is going to be in a price range above K-Mart. Add this to the visit from His Honor, the Mayor, last night, and I'd say we're looking at a person who's influential in the community."

Rebecca wrapped both hands around her oversized glass of tea and tilted her head briefly in acknowledgment of his deductions. "Very good. I'm impressed."

"Next we consider that your mother came to your parents penniless, gave a phony name on your birth certificate and left with a request that you never try to find her. From this we can assume her parents knew nothing of her pregnancy. The phone call you got last night and our visit from Morton tells me she's still hiding."

"So you really think Morton knows who she is?"

Jake thought about it for a minute, about the assessing way Morton had studied Rebecca, his determined reassurance that they'd find no traces of her parentage in Edgewater. "Yeah," he said. "I think he knows, and I think she's putting the pressure on him to get us out of town."

He realized he'd said the wrong thing as Rebecca's face fell. She was going to have to learn how to keep her every emotion from showing. Such transparency was like an invitation to the sharks of the world to move in for the kill.

He spread his hands in frustration. "You're going back to the motel, get your things and head out for Dallas. You had no business coming with me this morning. You're too involved, too emotional about this whole thing."

She stared at him coldly across the vinyl covered table. At least she didn't look so damned vulnerable. "Of course I'm emotionally involved. What do you expect? This is my family we're talking about. I assume even you have a family, a mother and father, that you didn't spring fully grown from the seat of that big chair in your office."

"Yeah, I got family. Enough for both of us. I'll tell you what, you take two or three of my step parents, and we'll call off this entire chase. In fact, you can even have my birth parents...if we can figure out which ones they are."

"What are you talking about?"

Jake tossed down the rest of his beer. One part of him didn't want to give her any of him, certainly not his personal life, but another part wanted to warn her, to let her know how foolish she was being.

He gave a mental shrug. What did it matter what he told her? It wasn't like she was going to be a part of his life for more than a few days at most.

"My parents got a divorce when I was a baby. When my dad remarried a couple of years later, I went to live with him so my mother could go back to school. But then my dad divorced his second wife and I went to live with my mother and her new husband. Until they got a divorce. To make a long story short, I never lived with anybody for more than a couple of years, and I have so many step parents and step brothers and step sisters and half-brothers and half-sisters, we'd have to rent Texas Stadium if we ever decided to have a reunion. And you know what? Having all that family hasn't done one damn thing to improve my life. All it's done is create chaos around Christmas. I never know who to buy a present for, who's going to give me a new tie I'll never wear or a bottle of cologne that smells like a service station bathroom. They don't know anything about me, I don't know anything about them, but we're family. Whatever that means."

Her expression had softened as he spoke. "I'm sorry you never had a real family."

He tilted his head back and drew in a deep, frustrated breath. "You're missing the point here. My family was real. Your family was real. Families don't come with rules. I have no complaints about mine. I don't recall ever being unhappy, just a little confused sometimes. But it sounds like you got a good one. So why not leave it at that? Why are you setting yourself up for disappointment? Why are you being greedy and asking for another good one?"

She leaned forward, her voice low and intense. "Greedy? Is it greedy to want to know who I am, what my mother looked like, where my grandparents came from...why my mother gave birth to me and then got away from me as fast as she could run?"

"Howdy!"

Jake's attention jerked toward the sound of the intrusion.

A pulpy-looking, ruddy faced, fortyish man wearing a police uniform smiled down at them. He held his cap politely in his hands, his fingers twisting the brim nervously. "I'm Farley Gates, Chief of Police. Mind if I join you?"