Cut To The Chase
Julie Kistler
Chicago detective Sean Calhoun has a knack for sniffing out trouble. And beautiful Abra Holloway is definitely trouble with a capital T! Pregnant, on the lam and incredibly sexy, she nevertheless needs his protection. What's a true-blue guy like Sean got to do but come to the rescue?As far as Abra is concerned, Sean can take a hike. She's got good reasons for hiding out. She doesn't need some gorgeous blue-eyed cop hovering over her. Even if he is hot stuff! Even if her hormones are going crazy and telling her to hit the sheets with him now. She's got to think of her unborn baby. But the longer Sean is around the harder it is not to imagine him changing diapers with her. And maybe making a few little Calhouns of their own…
Hunger gnawed at Abra
But it had nothing to do with the pizza she’d craved earlier. Sean was standing on her doorstep. His presence was tangible, so hard and male and tantalizing. He looked like sex on a stick dangled right in front of her.
She wanted this man. She wanted to grab him by the shirt and pull him into the bedroom.
Oh Lord, this was so not the time. Her new habit of popping into a state of instant arousal around him was so bizarre. Was it just the pregnancy that made her melt with need the minute she spotted a man with all the pieces in the right place? Or something else?
I have to get rid of him before it gets any worse, she thought wildly. But he knows who I am.
“I think you should leave,” she said.
All he said gently was “We need to talk, Abra.”
“Why? Looking for some more details for the tabloids?” she asked derisively, hoping that acting all mean would cool her sex drive.
Sean stood very still. There was an economy of motion around him she found appealing. Too appealing. And the way his hands jammed in his pockets pulled his jeans tighter across the front… Oh, my god, don’t stare at his uh—
So much for self-control.
Dear Reader,
It’s Harlequin Temptation’s twentieth birthday and we’re ready to do some celebrating. After all, we’re young, we’re legal (well, almost) and we’re old enough to get into trouble! Who could resist?
We’ve been publishing outstanding novels for the past twenty years, and there are many more where those came from. Don’t miss upcoming books by your favorite authors: Vicki Lewis Thompson, Kate Hoffmann, Kristine Rolofson, Jill Shalvis and Leslie Kelly. And Harlequin Temptation has always offered talented new authors to add to your collection. In the next few months look for stories from some of these exciting new finds: Emily McKay, Tanya Michaels, Cami Dalton and Mara Fox.
To celebrate our birthday, we’re bringing back one of our most popular miniseries, Editor’s Choice. Whenever we have a book that’s new, innovative, extraordinary, look for the Editor’s Choice flash. And the first one’s out this month! In Cover Me, talented Stephanie Bond tells the hilarious tale of a native New Yorker who finds herself out of her element and loving it. Written totally in the first person, Cover Me is a real treat. And don’t miss the rest of this month’s irresistible offerings—a naughty Wrong Bed book by Jill Shalvis, another installment of the True Blue Calhouns by Julie Kistler and a delightful Valentine tale by Kate Hoffmann.
So, come be a part of the next generation of Harlequin Temptation. We might be a little wild, but we’re having a whole lot of fun. And who knows—some of the thrill might rub off….
Enjoy,
Brenda Chin
Associate Senior Editor
Harlequin Temptation
Cut to the Chase
Julie Kistler
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR…
If you read Hot Prospect, the first book in THE TRUE BLUE CALHOUNS trilogy, you already know that a stand-up guy with a badge can be a pretty sexy thing, in or out of uniform. Jake Calhoun, the oldest brother, stole my heart with his steady, stalwart ways. But when it came to Sean, the second brother… Whoa. Creating Cut to the Chase for Sean made the temperature rise around here!
Sean is more of a rebel, but he, too, knows when it’s the right time to stand up and be counted. And that time turns out to be when he runs into Abra Holloway, a lifestyle expert and general “Miss Know-It-All” who’s having trouble knowing anything for sure these days. On the run, in a whole lot of trouble, Abra needs a guy like Sean. And she certainly wants a guy like Sean. In fact, she can’t stop wanting him. The two of them together turned out to be pretty combustible. I hope you agree!
And next month don’t forget to look for little brother Cooper, who is Packing Heat as he continues the brothers’ mission to look for the mysterious con woman who may be a) their illegitimate sister b) their father’s mistress, or c) none of the above. Will reckless, good-time Cooper be the True Blue Calhoun to find the quarry?
I hope you’re reading along to find out!
All the best,
Julie Kistler
Books by Julie Kistler
HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION
808—JUST A LITTLE FLING
907—MORE NAUGHTY THAN NICE
957—HOT PROSPECT
Dedicated to Birgit, for so many things, including grace under pressure and many kindnesses
Contents
Prologue (#u910c7be1-5334-54c2-8af1-a3cc8e5920b5)
Chapter 1 (#uef590c7f-1c47-5d92-911a-19cc8a84f20b)
Chapter 2 (#u480af680-ffe5-5cb2-8425-b90abcd2a453)
Chapter 3 (#u2c3da2f8-7420-5b37-b3e5-79755418cc49)
Chapter 4 (#uf638f233-5091-51d6-b14c-6d8668b66a40)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
ABRA SANK INTO A seat in the waiting area near her gate. She was ages early for her flight, and the place was deserted, with not even an agent behind the counter yet. Good. She could relax.
When she left the city, she’d rented a car and just driven blindly away, anywhere, finally dropping it in New Jersey. After that, she’d taken a train to Philly and a bus to Baltimore, and now she was flying to Chicago from there. It wasn’t as if it would be hard to follow her trail, even though her hair was now a different color and cut, she had no makeup on, and she was wearing a baseball cap she’d just purchased in the concourse. No one in the world would expect Abra Holloway to have brown hair, let alone an Orioles baseball cap.
But to trail her, someone would have to want to. And who would want to?
She leaned back into her uncomfortable seat, clutching her boarding pass. Gone were the days when she flew first class and flight attendants brought her extra drinks and other passengers sneaked up from coach to ask for her autograph.
“Better get used to it. You’re flying coach from now on,” she told herself sternly, sticking the ticket back in her bag and pulling out a book to read till her flight. But the book was about a dazzling television star with a terrible secret, and she couldn’t imagine why she’d bought it. Who wanted to read about that?
She glanced up at the TV mounted above the seats, almost afraid to look. Phew. Just a piece about a teapot exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Cute and wacky teapots. Nothing scary. But then the perky anchorwoman seemed to stare right out of the TV, straight at Abra, when she announced, “Sources in New York City report that media darling and lifestyle expert Abra Holloway has disappeared.”
Abra gulped. She looked around. Except for a man with a rolling garbage can headed to clean the ladies’ room, there was no one around. No one looking at her or noticing that her face was reflected on the monitor over her head.
“Although she was scheduled to appear on The Shelby Show last week as she has every Thursday for the past two years,” the anchorwoman continued, “host Shelby Marino revealed that ‘Abra Cadabra,’ as fans call her, would not be dispensing advice that day. Today, when another Thursday came and went without Holloway, and no explanation was offered for her failure to appear, reporters from several major news outlets began to make efforts to contact her. Shelby Marino and producers on The Shelby Show had no comment, but sources close to Holloway have indicated that she has apparently left the show and the city without a trace.”
What sources “close to Holloway”? Abra couldn’t think of one person besides Shelby she would call remotely close. There was Julian, of course. The world thought he was close, given the carefully crafted image they had portrayed. But Abra knew better.
Breaking into her thoughts, the woman on the television added, “There is no evidence of foul play. In fact, there is very little evidence at all. Her fiancé, millionaire businessman and philanthropist Julian Wheelwright, spoke to the press earlier today.”
Abra’s heart beat faster, but her eyes were riveted to the TV. Oh, lord, lord, lord. Not Julian. He looked as smoothly handsome as ever, with his blond hair perfectly styled, as always, and his blue eyes so very sincere.
Damn him and his blue eyes both. “Never trust a man with blue eyes,” she muttered. She’d had long-term relationships with a total of two men in her entire life, and they’d both had gorgeous blue eyes. They’d also both turned out to be beyond redemption, beneath contempt. Never trust a man with blue eyes. She promised to cross-stitch that motto onto a sampler and take it everywhere she went. As soon as she got somewhere she could find cross-stitch supplies and safely sit around and stitch without anyone bothering her.
She felt like bursting into tears. Oh, jeez. If brown hair and baseball caps were weird for Abra Holloway, weeping in public was really beyond the pale. She gazed, transfixed, at the TV. She didn’t want to see Julian, and yet she couldn’t look away. What would he say? Why did he give a press conference? Why couldn’t he just keep his damn mouth shut?
“I understand that Abra’s many fans are surprised and worried, but there’s no need,” Julian offered, sending the viewing public a serene smile. “Yes, of course we’re still engaged, and no, nothing is wrong.”
Nothing wrong? Julian’s pants ought to be on fire for that one.
“She simply felt a little stressed,” he went on, “a little overwhelmed because of mounting duties on The Shelby Show and discussions of her own daily syndicated series. She decided to take a break to get her plans in order.”
Her mouth fell open at the boldness of his lies. Still engaged? After she’d thrown his ring at his brilliant, lying white teeth? Stressed and overwhelmed because of The Shelby Show? As if. That show was a walk in the park.
And now he was saying that she’d left him a note and told him not to worry, that she loved him and would be back soon. All a pack of lies!
“I know and trust Abra completely,” he finished, in a firm and certain tone, “and if she says this is the right thing for her at this moment, then it is. As her fans will tell you, Abra is very focused and she always knows what’s right.”
Abra didn’t know what to think. Well, at least this way maybe no one would be looking for her. Maybe she should be thanking him for trying to take the heat out of her vanishing act.
“He probably just wants to clear himself.” She glared at his handsome image. “I hope the police think he murdered me. It would serve him right.”
But his face on the screen had been replaced by hers again. She saw footage of herself on The Shelby Show, with her beautifully styled honey-blond hair brushing her shoulders, her skin flawless, her posture perfect. She looked so confident and assured, smiling sympathetically at a guest who wanted help with a husband hooked on outdoor sex. The woman’s description of her husband’s desire to make love up against the Washington Monument elicited giggles from the audience, but didn’t faze the amazingly cool and composed Abra Holloway one bit.
Had that only been a few months ago? Could things possibly have been as simple then as they looked on TV?
“Holloway first came to prominence with her weekly visits to The Shelby Show,” the newswoman went on, “as she offered advice and counsel on everything from how to bring order to messy closets to how to acquire better self-esteem and find the love of your life. She acquired the nickname Abra Cadabra because of her apparent magic touch when it came to helping people sort through their problems.”
Abra frowned. She hated that nickname. But it only got weirder after that. Someone she had never seen, someone who was identified as her biggest fan, popped up on the TV.
“I am very worried,” this stranger confided. “This isn’t like the Abra I know. Why would she run away?”
“Who are you? You don’t know me,” Abra argued back at the television.
But the unknown woman wasn’t finished. “Abra has always been so together,” she said with conviction. “Her life is perfect. Wouldn’t she just use the Ten Steps to Personal Growth, which, you know, she invented, to work through whatever it is?”
And then this alleged biggest fan held up a copy of a New York tabloid with the screaming headline Where’s Our Abra?
“We need to know she’s okay,” the woman declared, starting to choke up. “We need our Abra Cadabra to come home, wherever she is, whatever the problem is. Abra, if you’re out there listening—please come home. We need you. Please?”
“So there you have it.” The polished anchorwoman folded her hands on her desk. “A real mystery surrounding Abra Holloway. The question of the day has become, ‘Where’s our Abra?’ But no one seems to know the answer.”
In an airport in Baltimore, Abra Holloway ducked under her baseball cap, picked up her bags and moved farther away from the TV.
1
DETECTIVE SEAN CALHOUN was running late. And if his cell phone didn’t stop ringing, he swore he was going to throw the thing in Lake Michigan.
“Damn it.” When he pulled it out of his jacket pocket, he saw he’d missed a call, too, somewhere between cleaning the paperwork off his desk and his last meeting with the supervisor of detectives to brief him on a couple of things before Sean left on vacation.
So first he looked at the number from the other call, noted it was his older brother, Jake, the person he was supposed to meet a half hour ago, cursed again, and then answered the new call, only to immediately wish he hadn’t.
“Sean, you gotta come over right away,” his mother’s voice ordered.
“Ma, I don’t have time for any more fix-ups, I don’t care who they are,” he returned.
“You still haven’t called my friend Bebe’s niece, have you?” she asked smartly. “Or Aunt Ruthie’s neighbor, the girl who makes such good meat loaf? She brought Aunt Ruthie cookies yesterday, just to be nice. Can you believe it? Such a sweetheart. She would make a wonderful mother.”
Yeah, like that was a real bonus. The last thing he wanted was a wife and kids. He’d been trying to get out from under his family’s thumb as long as he could remember. Why create a new generation of Calhouns and prolong the misery?
“Why don’t you try Jake?” he suggested, trying not to sound too annoyed, which would only make his mother dig in her heels harder. “He’s hitting thirty in a couple of months. I’ve got a few good years left. So why don’t you work on Jake instead of me?”
“Jake, ha!” she said dismissively. “He is so much like your father it’s not funny. Why would I waste a good woman on that?”
“Yeah, well, don’t waste them on me, either,” Sean said flatly. “No fix-ups.”
“That’s not even why I called in the first place. Sean, you got such a chip on your shoulder, I swear.”
“So why did you call?”
“I need you to come over as soon as you can get here,” she whispered, hissing into the phone. “I think your father is having an affair.”
“Oh, man.” This was even worse than another fix-up. “Ma, you know there’s no way Dad is having an affair.”
Michael Calhoun, one of five deputy superintendents of police for the city of Chicago, was as straight an arrow as they came. An affair? Yeah, right. That would be way too interesting for his by-the-book old man.
“I got evidence,” his mother contended.
“Yeah, okay, well, I’m already late to meet Jake,” he explained, trying to be patient. This affair thing was a new one for his mother, but not entirely surprising. She had a tendency to be jealous and to keep her husband and her sons, especially Sean, on a short leash. “Jake and I are supposed to pick up Cooper and head to Wisconsin, to the fishing cabin, remember? So it’s not a good time.”
“Your brothers will just have to wait. This is important.”
“Listen, I have a message from Jake here. Let me see what that is and call you right back, okay?” Without giving her a chance to object, he disconnected her and punched in the code to hear his message.
“Something’s come up, Sean,” Jake’s voice growled in his ear. “Sorry. Dad’s sending me on this weird errand and I’m not going to make it to Wisconsin. You and Coop go ahead without me, okay? Have a great time.”
“Damn it, Jake.” Sean clenched his jaw. First Mom and the craziness about Dad having an affair, and now Jake was bailing on him, leaving him with custody of their flaky younger brother Cooper. At times like this, he was really sorry he was a Calhoun.
And his phone was ringing again.
“Sean?” his mother asked. “You didn’t call me right back.”
“I didn’t get a chance.”
She made a harrumphing noise. “I’m expecting you within the next ten minutes. Get over here.” She hung up on him this time.
Funny that Jake had said their dad was sending him on some kind of errand he couldn’t get out of. When Dad called, Jake jumped. But when their mother needed something, it was always Sean who got the call, whether he wanted to or not.
His father constantly got on his case about being the family rebel. Some rebel. Hadn’t he ended up on the police force like all the rest of them? Wasn’t he constantly at his mother’s beck and call?
Frowning, wondering if it was too late to become an only child or an orphan, he quickly dialed Cooper, the only member of the family still unaccounted for, but got voice mail. “Hey, Coop, it’s Sean. I’m tied up. Jake says he’s off on a mission for Dad and Mom is giving me grief about something else. You can go ahead to the cabin if you want, and I’ll try to meet you there later.”
He dropped his phone in his pocket, shrugged into his jacket, and made tracks to his car. Might as well see what bee Mom had in her bonnet.
He laughed. Dad having an affair. Yeah, right.
“I THOUGHT YOU’D NEVER get here,” Yvonne Calhoun declared, swinging open the door before he had an opportunity to knock. He noticed immediately that her face was red, her eye makeup was smudged, and she had chewed off her lipstick, all of which was very unusual.
So she was very upset. It didn’t take a detective to figure that out.
“Mom, you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just come in already, will you?”
Sean ducked in the door, feeling eighteen and surly, like he did every time he came back to the Calhoun family house. It was impossible not to revert to a teenage attitude under that roof. Wipe your feet, say please and thank-you, don’t eat or drink in the living room… Remembering all the rules made him want to do every single thing he wasn’t supposed to do.
Jamming his hands into his pockets, Sean ambled into the immaculate living room, avoiding looking at the stern pictures of his mother’s parents, Grandma and Grandpa Bergner, on the piano. Next to that were framed pictures of three generations of Calhoun men in their Chicago Police Department uniforms. The True Blue Calhouns. Sean curled his lip. Yeah. Whatever.
“Okay,” he began. “I’m here now. So what’s this junk about Dad having an affair?”
“It’s not junk. He is having an affair,” his mother said quickly. “Bebe saw him.”
“Your friend Bebe saw Dad having an affair?” That was a nasty image. Not that he believed it for a minute. “With who?”
“Well, I don’t know who she is. A bimbo.” His mom scurried off to the kitchen, but she stopped in the doorway. “Do you want something to drink? A cookie?”
“No, Ma. I want to know what this is all about.”
“Sit down. Bebe is here. She’ll tell you,” she called out from the kitchen. “Bebe, go into the living room and talk to Sean while I get the coffee. And take the pictures with you.”
Pictures? Could this get any worse? He had the fleeting thought that maybe it was just pictures of more prospective dates. Maybe this was all subterfuge. But Mom seemed awfully hopped up for just another scheme to marry him off.
“Hiya, Sean,” Bebe offered, patting her hair with one manicured nail as she waltzed into the living room. Bebe was not just his mother’s best friend, but also her hairdresser, and her hair had been every color in the rainbow in the short time Sean had known her. Today it was kind of a deep maroon and flipped up on the ends.
“Hi,” he returned. “What’s this all about?”
“Your mom needs you, honey,” she said soothingly. She handed over a stack of photos and then took a seat next to him on the sofa. “I’m real sorry and all, but I saw what I saw. What can I say?”
Sean glanced down at the top picture. “Dad sitting on a park bench wearing a trench coat, with a woman next to him and about three feet in between them. So?”
Bebe tapped the photo with one purple fingernail. “I was at the park, just minding my own business walking my sister’s dog—I was dog-sitting, just in case you wondered what I was doing up there, because that is not my part of town—and who do I see but Michael Calhoun, schmoozing with this chickie who is half his age and has a terrible dye job.” She rolled her eyes. “The roots!”
“And you just happened to have a camera?”
“No, that was the second time,” she told him.
“A second time!” his mother chorused grimly, coming back carrying a mug of coffee and a plate of cookies. “Have a cookie.”
“I don’t want a cookie. And since when do you let people eat or drink in the living room?”
She waved away his objection. “Everything has fallen apart. Your father is cheating on me. What do I care about a little spill in the living room? Bebe saw the schmuck twice with his tootsie. I told you I had evidence.” She sat next to him on the couch, pushing him over from the other side, so that he was squashed between the two women.
“Mom, I really think you’re making a whole mountain range out of a molehill here,” he tried, setting the photos down in his lap. “So he went to the park and some woman sat next to him? So what? Have you found lipstick on his collar? Receipts from crummy motels? Or from jewelry or gifts that weren’t for you?”
“No, of course not,” she said indignantly. “He’s a cop, Sean. How stupid do you think he’s going to be?”
“I have no idea. But I’m not willing to make a case of adultery out of a chat on a park bench.”
She jumped off the couch and started pacing back and forth. “But he lied to me about where he was. Okay, so Bebe saw him in the park and thought it was odd, just the way he was dressed and the way he was kind of talking to this woman out of the corner of his mouth, all strange.”
“I just knew something was weird with him the minute I saw him,” Bebe agreed. “It looked very suspicious, you know? So I didn’t go over, didn’t say hello, nothing, just got the dog and got out of there.”
“And she said to me, why was Michael up at Humboldt Park the other day? And I’m wondering about this, because I don’t know any reason. The man has a desk job. He doesn’t go out in the field anymore. I mean, maybe to a luncheon or something, but the middle of a park? Meeting some young slutty-looking girl? I don’t think so.” Picking up steam as she continued the story, his mother perched next to him again on the couch, nudging him to look at the photos again. “So I ask him where he was that day, and he shrugs and says he was at work. All day. He remembers because it was such a busy day. And, of course, I know he’s lying. So I tell his secretary, who is a doll, to let me know the next time he’s out of the office and doesn’t have an appointment in the book.”
“Oh, Ma…” Sean stared into space. His mother playing amateur detective and checking up on his dad and conspiring with his secretary? And right when the old man was up for a major promotion? He’d never forgive her.
Sean looked up. On the other hand, what was Michael Calhoun doing on that park bench with that woman? He narrowed his eyes at the photos. Ever since he’d cracked a couple of hard cases, people had been teasing him about his “uncanny knack for seeing the truth.” It was a quote from a newspaper account of his career, and the other detectives—and his brothers—thought it was pretty funny to ride him about it. It was a bunch of baloney, but still… If he stared at the photo of his father and the curvy blonde long enough, would he see the real deal behind this shadowy meeting in the park?
“So the next time your father wasn’t where he was supposed to be, I sent Bebe back to Humboldt Park again, you know, disguised, so she could get closer this time. She wore a headscarf and sunglasses and pushed a baby carriage. Your father never suspected a thing,” his mom said with fierce satisfaction.
Bebe in disguise, pushing a baby carriage. It might’ve been funny if it weren’t so horrifying. “Let me get this straight. You had Bebe shadowing Dad at the park?”
“So? She got some very good pictures, didn’t she?” His mother shook her head. “Same woman, same park bench. Meeting her again. And look at her, Sean. Cheap Christmas trash.”
Well, he couldn’t disagree. Bebe’s clear, sharp photographs showed a dyed-blonde with obvious roots and a frizzy ponytail, big sunglasses, and a dark raincoat over her clothes. She had a good jawline, a determined little chin, and what appeared to be a nicely shaped mouth exaggerated by a load of shiny, dark pink lipstick. The raincoat was open far enough in several of the pictures to reveal a low-cut top, very tight jeans, and the most god-awful pair of shoes he’d ever seen. They were clear plastic sandals with very high heels and glitter and stars plastered all over them. He didn’t have to be a detective to recognize hooker shoes when he saw them.
So which was worse? The assumption that his dad was having an affair? Or that he was somehow involved with a prostitute?
“All right,” he said grimly. “You’ve got photos of him with a suspicious woman. Is there more?”
“That’s the thing, Sean. I was waiting for him to have, you know, another unexplained absence. But he hasn’t. Well, until today, but his secretary heard him on the phone arranging to meet Jake, so I think that was okay.”
“Yeah,” Sean put in. “I got a message from Jake canceling the fishing trip. He said Dad had an errand for him. So that checks out.”
“So since the meeting where Bebe got the pictures, he’s been clean. But now…” Her voice was positively triumphant as she made a flourish Bebe’s way.
“I saw her again,” Bebe whispered.
“At the park?”
“Oh, no. At the airport.” Bebe leaned forward, her eyes wide. “I had to go pick up my niece, who is such a nice girl. And so smart. She had a scholarship to Johns Hopkins. You should meet her, Sean. She’d be perfect for you.”
“Uh huh. How about the rest of the story?”
“Well, I went to pick up my niece, and who do I see? That same woman from the park! Oh, she was trying to look different all right—her hair was a different color and she had a headscarf, a bandanna kind of thing, but that did not fool me.” Bebe, now the queen of scarf disguises, nodded sagely. “I recognized that trick, I’ll tell you.”
“You saw her at the airport,” Sean said patiently. “So she was leaving town. Which is good, right? If Dad was somehow mixed up with this woman, he’s not now, because she left town.”
“Oh, no, that’s the thing,” Bebe interrupted. “She wasn’t leaving. She was arriving.”
“I don’t get it. If she was already in Chicago, why was she arriving?”
“We don’t get it, either,” his mother said, patting his arm. “But that’s where you come in.”
He had a very bad feeling about this. And since Jake had just canceled out on the fishing trip, Sean didn’t really have a good excuse to duck and run, either.
“Sean, my sweet, adorable son,” Yvonne Calhoun murmured, putting her head on his shoulder, “we all know you have this…”
He knew what would be next.
“You have an uncanny knack for seeing the truth,” she finished. “Sean, you are practically psychic when it comes to these criminals and figuring them out. Disguises, deceptions, it’s nothing to you. You just see right through.”
Already feeling trapped, he asked, “What do you want me to do?”
His mother sat up straight, laying it out for him without mincing words. “Here’s the deal. Bebe saw her at the baggage pickup, she thought it was her so she followed her, she lost her again, but then she picked her out at the Help desk.”
“I spotted the headscarf,” Bebe said helpfully.
“So she got right in behind her at the Help desk and eavesdropped.”
“Wow, Bebe, maybe you should join the force,” Sean suggested, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. Keystone Kops on a stakeout.
“I know,” Bebe said with a smile. “I was pretty good, I’ll tell you.”
“And what did you hear when you eavesdropped?” he asked tersely, knowing he didn’t really want to know.
“She wanted to know how to get to…”
Sean bent closer, waiting for the word that would come at the end of the dramatic pause. “Where?”
“Champaign,” both women said at once.
“Downstate Champaign?” he asked doubtfully. “University of Illinois?”
“Exactly.” His mother sat back. “She caught a bus to go downstate to Champaign. So I want you to go there, too, and find this tart and figure out what she wants with your father.”
2
AS SEAN UNPACKED AT the Illini Union, he could feel himself begin to relax. A beautiful summer day. A nice hotel room overlooking the Quad on a serene, green college campus where most of the students were gone for the summer. And just about no chance in hell he would ever run into anything remotely connected to the bimbo in the hooker shoes his mother wanted him to find.
Okay, so he felt a little silly being on a wild-goose chase. But as long as he already knew it was a wild-goose chase, what difference did it make? He could hang out in Champaign-Urbana, enjoy himself for a few days, and then head back to town and tell his mother with a crystal-clear conscience that he had done what she’d asked and gee whiz, he just didn’t find hide nor hair of the woman she was looking for. Sounded like the easiest case he’d ever been assigned.
And, hey, accepting her crazy mission got him out of town, didn’t it? Out of town, away from his desk, away from Mom and her endless string of fix-ups, and away from the responsibility of baby-sitting Cooper at a fishing cabin for a week. Not so bad. Especially when it meant he was back in Champaign-Urbana, which struck him as a great place for a little R&R.
He’d gone to college here, and he had fond memories of pickup basketball games, excellent pizza, lousy beer and general irresponsibility. Good times.
After stowing his belongings, he didn’t waste any time, grabbing a bottle of water and quickly taking the stairs down to the ground floor of the Union. He planned to make a fast trip down memory lane to check out some of his old haunts and get his bearings. Then he would tool around town with the blonde’s picture, put out a few discreet inquiries, enough to truthfully say he’d done his duty, and get beyond that to the beer and pizza as soon as possible.
First, memory lane. Sean was actually smiling as he slid out the big white doors onto the Quad, feeling footloose and fancy-free for the first time in forever. That smile lasted approximately four minutes, which was as long as it took him to walk down the west side of the Quad, past a group of kids and a guide walking backward on a college orientation tour, and glance up at the auditorium looming ahead.
Because that was when she showed up.
Her. As nearly as he could tell, the same one from the photo.
From out of nowhere, she came walking toward him. Automatically, he assessed the details. Head down, looking at the sidewalk. Left hand rammed into the pocket of a long denim coat. Right hand wrapped around the handle of a canvas tote bag with Chicago White Sox written on it.
Her eyes were hidden by dark, impenetrable sunglasses, similar to the ones in the picture. She had brown hair, cut kind of choppy, with the ends visible under a bandanna. Pale skin. Clean, elegant jaw. Feisty little chin. Perfectly formed lips.
Sean blinked. Was he nuts? Or was that really her, the one in Bebe’s photographs?
He felt like someone had set off a signal flare inside his head. Surprise, excitement, the thrill of the chase… The zing in the air was as unexpected as it was unwelcome.
Luckily, he had the presence of mind to keep moving after she cut across in front of him and took up residence under a tree. As casually as if he were any old tourist retracing his college memories, he ambled around the steps of the auditorium, turning to gaze back up the Quad, pretending to take in the vista of sun-dappled trees and stately buildings as he gathered data on his mystery woman.
Although she looked a little nervous, fussing with the ends of her hair, arranging her coat, adjusting her sunglasses, she seemed unaware of his scrutiny as she plunked herself down on the grass under a maple tree. Sean bided his time, watching, sipping quietly at his water bottle, wishing his instincts would knock off the high alert already and quit pumping adrenaline through his veins.
Forcing himself to judge the facts, he noted that she wore a lot less makeup than the woman in the picture, plus her hair was a different color and length, and there was no sign of trashy footwear, just plain flat sandals. On the other hand, her lips, face shape, and overall bone structure were a good match, she was the right height, she was wearing a bandanna, which was something Bebe had specifically mentioned, and…
And he had a strong gut feeling, the kind he had learned to trust. After all, an “uncanny knack for seeing the truth” was right there on his resume.
Impatient with that “knack,” as always, Sean went back to hard, cold facts. His mantra was that bones didn’t lie, and those sure looked like the cheekbones and chin line of the woman in the photo.
What else? He couldn’t see much of her body inside the bulky coat, but that itself was suspicious, considering the fact that everyone else around was in shorts and T-shirts or tank tops in the hot weather. Plus she was wearing sunglasses and a scarf and her hair was a phony shade of brown, all of which had “disguise” written all over it. In his opinion, her demeanor was anxious, somewhat furtive, as she huddled there under the tree, deliberately not looking at anyone. She was definitely sending out “pay no attention to me” vibes.
It all added up to someone who had a lot to hide.
But it couldn’t be the right woman, could it? Not only had he not expected to find her in the first five minutes he was in town, he hadn’t expected to find her at all.
And he hadn’t expected her to be so…interesting. Even with the odd clothing, she had this kind of aura, as if she was just more vivid than anybody or anything around her. Call it ESP or just that blasted “uncanny knack” he was supposed to have, but Sean had a strong feeling that if he peeled off the scarf and the sunglasses and the bulky denim coat, he would conclude that she was…
Beautiful. Smart. Intriguing. A knockout.
“Okay, now you’re really going around the bend,” he said under his breath. Must just be some weird kind of investigative eagerness kicking in, making him feel all hot and bothered in inappropriate ways. It had never happened before, but there was a first time for everything.
Taking a long swig of water to cool his jets, Sean pushed himself back to reality, back to the question at hand. Was she the quarry he was supposed to be looking for?
Physically, the details matched. But the fact remained that she was not at all what he had expected from the woman in Bebe’s photo, the one with the frizzy, bleached hair and trashy ’ho shoes. The one who might be playing mattress macarena with his father.
That idea had become even more disgusting now that he’d found her.
Frowning, Sean backed off. Putting a little more distance between them, he looped around the side of the Foreign Language Building to keep an eye on her while he decided what to do. Since he’d had no reasonable expectation of finding her, he had never gotten to the point of planning what he should do if he did. Take a picture and send it back to Bebe for a positive ID? Get fingerprints and try to track down her identity or her rap sheet? Chat her up and see if he could get her to spill what was happening with his father, if anything was happening at all? None of it made any sense.
Meanwhile, as he pondered his next move, she still didn’t appear to have a clue that he was there, which meant she had lousy survival instincts. Or a trusting nature.
He got his answer on that one when a scruffy kid on a bicycle rode up. “Hey!” the kid shouted, jumping off his bike right next to her. Petty thief? Purse-snatcher? Something worse? Sean decided he was close enough to jump in if his law enforcement skills were required, but he hung back for now. She sat up abruptly, looking very, very nervous, sort of like Bambi in the headlights. But then the kid extended his hand, shuffling his feet, trying to act all tragic and woebegone. Asking for a handout, no doubt. She relaxed, smiling up at him. Great smile. Bright, shiny, sincere. There had been no evidence of that in Bebe’s photos, but it was everything you could ask for in a smile.
If he hadn’t been such a cynical man, Sean told himself he might’ve felt all warm and fuzzy after seeing her beaming at the boy.
So she rooted around in a big tote bag, took out a few bucks, and handed them over, after which the boy said thank-you loud enough for the tour group all the way down at the other end of the Quad to hear. Then he leapt back on his bike and zoomed away, leaving Sean to conclude that the girl was either an easy touch or just a sap. Or that had been the best-disguised drug deal in the history of the universe.
Sean cooled his heels, wishing he had a newspaper or something else to give him a little cover, but it didn’t seem to matter, since she didn’t look his way. Again, he was struck by her lousy survival skills. He’d been spying on her for a good half hour, and she was clueless.
As he watched and waited, she removed the bandanna, rubbed a hand—left hand, no rings—over her forehead and then carefully tied the scarf back on again; she stared into space; she pulled out a book and dropped it in her lap without opening it; she leaned against the tree and tipped her head back as if she were dozing; she looked a little flushed and clapped her hand over her mouth and left it there for several seconds; she took off her sunglasses and wiped at her eyes with a tissue which he took to mean she either had allergies or she was crying; and she rooted around her bag and took out a package of saltine crackers, which she proceeded to eat, one by one, until she had demolished the whole package. Then she folded her trash back into the bag quite neatly, stood up, hoisted her bag, and began to walk away.
So of course he followed.
Disguise, crying, hungry enough to snarf lots of crackers, possibly a headache or something else physically wrong leading to the flush and the hand over the mouth… What did it all add up to? Sean contemplated some possibilities. Heat stroke from that silly coat? Mental illness but not taking her meds? Undercover or on the lam? Some kind of damsel in distress, emotional or otherwise?
As he trailed her, he found himself with lots more questions, but not getting any closer to answers. If she was the right woman, and the physical resemblance plus how closely she matched Bebe’s description made him about eighty percent certain she was, then what had she been doing with his father on that park bench in Chicago, and what was she doing down here now? He was surprised to realize just how much he wanted to solve this riddle. Whether she was or wasn’t the “tootsie” his mom wanted him to find, this woman in the long coat and sunglasses, with her crackers and her tissues, she was hiding out in Champaign-Urbana, acting very strangely. And he needed to know why.
Sean stayed about a block behind her as she cut down a quiet campus street and ducked into a coffeehouse. He saw her get a muffin and a carton of milk, slowly consume both at an outdoor table that was remarkably easy to keep under surveillance, and then once again take off walking. It took about ten or eleven blocks of her walking straight ahead, not noticing him skirting around trees behind her, before she walked up to the front door of a small home on a tree-lined side street just off-campus. She put a key in the door and disappeared inside.
No car outside. Nothing in the front yard. No sign that anyone else was in the house.
From the protective cover of a large evergreen outside an apartment building across the street, Sean considered his day’s work. Approximately four hours in Champaign-Urbana, and he’d already located his target, shadowed her, and found out where she was staying. Not bad. Not bad at all.
BY THE THIRD DAY, Sean had her routine down cold. She would emerge from her house about nine or ten, ridiculously overdressed, carefully buttoned into that damn coat, with sunglasses and some sort of hat. She would walk to the Quad, sit under the same maple tree, eat an amazing number of crackers, stare into space, and look anxious or upset from time to time, with maybe a tear or two. She also fed a squirrel on one occasion, protected herself from an errant Frisbee on another, and twice stopped to read flyers taped to a kiosk.
Nice profile, good nose, excellent smile, beautiful skin. Fondness for American League baseball, given the White Sox bag and the Orioles cap she had on today, and a major taste for saltines, grapes, cheese curls, pizza, McDonald’s French fries, muffins, and milk, given what he’d seen her pull out of the tote bag and consume on the Quad. Especially saltines.
Man, he was in bad shape—slipping from surveillance ever closer to plain old stalking—if he was reduced to keeping track of every crumb she ate. At least he had a plan now, and a routine of his own that included a backpack, water bottle, very small camera, newspaper, and a book on college sports, just in case he needed cover if anyone saw him spying. So far, he’d left a few messages for his mother—purposely calling when he knew she wouldn’t be in so he didn’t have to talk to her—to let her know he was on the case. But other than that, he’d kept quiet about finding his target. Mostly biding his time, he’d managed to snap her picture from various angles to compare to the ones from Bebe, but that was about it. He figured he could watch and wait a little longer, at least until he saw whether she contacted anyone or anyone dropped by to visit her. Like his father.
Even thinking about that made him grind his teeth and think unpleasant thoughts.
“No way that girl is fooling around with my old man,” he said grimly from his vantage point behind the front doors of Lincoln Hall. Every instinct he had told him that much, anyway. If she was the one Bebe saw in the park and at the airport, there must be some other reason…
But his analysis of the situation was interrupted when she suddenly bolted up from where she was sitting, abandoning her snacks and her tote bag, careening off toward a secluded area near the English Building and looking a little green around the gills while she did it. Without a second’s hesitation, Sean made tracks to follow.
He caught up to her where she’d stopped to hang on to a tree trunk for dear life. She’d knocked off her sunglasses, her hat had fallen off a few feet away, and she was bent over at the waist, with one hand pressed into her stomach and the other firmly over her mouth.
Pale, shaky, unsteady, she turned. Her gaze met Sean’s.
Wow. He’d never seen her without the sunglasses. Her eyes were hazel. Even under these circumstances, they were beautiful and warm. Very warm. She paused, blinked, still focused on him, as if she were trying to place him and figure out what he was doing there. He had never felt so awkward and yet so instantly connected to anyone in his life.
Unable to remain merely an onlooker, Sean found himself vaulting into a role as an active participant in this little drama whether he wanted to or not. She was staring at him intently, and he knew he should back off or walk on by before she really did decide he was a stalker. But he couldn’t.
Sean edged nearer, picking up the baseball cap. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “I don’t mean to intrude. But I could tell you were…”
And that was when he finally put two and two together. The bulky clothes, the saltines, the sudden nausea…
She was pregnant.
Sean blinked, backing off a step. Pregnant?
Of course. It all made sense. And yet…
The woman who might be his father’s girlfriend was pregnant? He felt like he’d been punched in the gut.
3
“GO AWAY,” ABRA said flatly.
The last thing she needed at this particular moment was some nosy stranger moving in on her and trying to interfere. He didn’t look dangerous, just way too cute for his own good, with light brown hair cut short and shoved carelessly to one side, and an intense, serious expression on his very fine face. Wearing a white T-shirt and faded blue jeans, with a backpack slung over one shoulder, he seemed like a regular guy. Or at least an extremely good-looking regular guy. Wide shoulders, nice muscles, lean hips… If he stripped off that shirt, she bet she’d find abs to die for. She had this thing about abs, a thing she had never admitted to anyone, not even herself, really. But she still had it.
She spared him another glance and immediately wished she hadn’t. He was adorable, whoever he was, standing there, looking all concerned. And he had blue eyes, too. She might’ve known. All the worst ones had blue eyes, just to torment her.
“A snoop is still a snoop, no matter how hunky the package,” she said under her breath.
He moved closer. “I’m sorry—what did you say?”
Abra groaned, hanging on tight to her friendly tree, wishing her stomach would stop this topsy-turvy stuff. She’d eaten every saltine in sight and she still felt absolutely miserable. But, hey, she was upright. Right now, that amounted to a major victory. Especially with this adorable guy with the fabulous blue eyes staring at her as if she were some exotic wild animal while she tried her darnedest not to barf. If she weren’t so sick, she would’ve considered dying of humiliation.
“I said, go away,” she repeated.
But he shook his head, still advancing on her. “I want to help,” he said kindly. “For one thing, I think we should get you out of that coat before you pass out from the heat.”
Before she could move away, he was right there, gently holding her steady as he unwound her from the heavy denim coat and folded it over his arm. Great. A chivalrous snoopy hunk.
“Better?” he asked in that same soothing, annoying tone, laying his palm on her forehead as if she were a three-year-old with a temperature, and she wanted to smack him. Actually, she wanted him to leave that cool hand there forever, or better yet, move it somewhere more fun. But she knew that was just the hormones talking way too loud.
And they needed to shut up. Now.
One hand on her forehead, one momentary physical connection, and all she could think about was how much she liked his long, elegant fingers, how amazing it felt to be touched, what a pretty color his eyes were, how steady his gaze, how hungry she was for a man’s hands and lips and…
Shut up. Now! she commanded her noisy hormones.
Still, his fingers felt so good, and those blue eyes, fringed with thick lashes, sparkling with intelligence and concern, were awfully tempting. She could so easily fall into that gaze and never even want to escape.
As a new wave of nausea swamped her, Abra cursed her luck. Just once in her life, it would’ve been nice to give in and trust somebody to take over, to swoon into his arms and let this sexy stranger carry her off.
Yeah, right. She straightened. Like she wasn’t in enough trouble already. All she needed was to add to it by drooling all over a man she didn’t even know, someone who could be a publicity hound or a crazed fan or just a garden-variety serial killer.
Starting to panic just a little for a whole new set of reasons, Abra edged away from his hand, mumbling, “Thank you, but…”
But I’m supposed to be in disguise, and now my hat and my sunglasses and even my nice, baggy coat are gone, and all that’s left is Abra Holloway, media star, with ugly dyed brown hair and a bad case of the heaves. And even if you aren’t a serial killer, you are way too gorgeous to be standing there staring at me while I toss my cookies!
“You still don’t look well,” he noted. He fished around in his backpack and pulled out a bottle of water. “Maybe you should let me take you somewhere cooler, where you can sit down. In the meantime, how about a drink of water?”
It looked untouched, but still… Did he really think she would drink out of his bottle? She considered. Well, yes, she would. Her mouth was dry, she was overheated, her stomach was unsettled, and that water sounded pretty good, whether there were Adorable Stranger germs on the bottle or not. Lifting her chin, pulling together every shred of composure she could muster, she found a thin smile for her sweet, misguided Galahad and reached for the water.
After wiping the top, she took two long swallows and then another one, greedily finishing it off. “I feel better now,” she whispered, awkwardly handing back the empty plastic bottle. “Thank you.”
He smiled. “You’re welcome.”
Oh, dear. The smile was a killer. Her knees felt all wobbly, and it had nothing to do with the nausea.
Even after the water, she wasn’t exactly capable of leaving her handy tree and walking away from him just yet, but she knew she had to get away from that amazing smile and out from under his penetrating gaze. How long before he recognized her, especially with her disguise reduced to a bad dye job and no makeup? She sent him a quick glance. What if he already did recognize her and that was the reason he’d stepped in?
“Thank you so much for your help,” she said as steadily as she could manage, stepping gingerly to the other side of the tree, away from Sir Galahad and his helpful hands. “I’m feeling lots better. Really. And I wouldn’t want to keep you from whatever it is you were up to when you decided to, you know, leap in and rescue me from my coat. Because I’m fine. Really.”
With the tree between them, she tried to laugh, holding out her free hand, signaling to him that he should return her coat. But he didn’t.
“I don’t think you’re fine,” he put in. “Actually, I think you should get out of the heat and sit down. In your condition, I mean.”
She paused, feeling her turbulent tummy take a dive. “My condition?”
“With the saltines and the nausea, it wasn’t hard to figure out,” he said softly.
“You’re wrong,” she rushed to assure him. “I mean, you were right the first time. I was overheated in the coat, that’s all. Or maybe it’s a touch of summer flu.”
“Nice try, but… Listen, this is a little weird, but I noticed you a few days ago and I’ve been, well, keeping an eye on you.” He studied her, wary, alert, way too smart behind those blue eyes. “I think I know who you are and what this is all about.”
It took a second for his words to reach her. “You know?” Full-fledged panic thumped under her heart, and she turned her whole body in toward the tree. Too late to hide now, especially since Galahad apparently had X-ray vision.
Oh, lord, lord, lord. Her worst nightmare. Both her worst nightmares. Discovered! Uncovered! Even without the coat, she was so hot she thought she might expire right there in front of him, which would, of course, make it all that much worse because she would be unconscious and unable to defend herself, leaving him free to cart her off to the ER and hit the speed-dial for CNN to tell them that Abra Holloway had just fainted in the middle of Illinois. Pregnant Abra Holloway.
Concepts like “CNN,” “Abra Holloway” and “pregnant” swirled around her head like bees. And it was all his fault! He was talking again, in that same level, soothing tone, the one that made her think of forest rangers trying to talk wild animals into cages, but she only caught the tail end of it. Not that it mattered. It still didn’t make any sense.
“It’s understandable,” he offered, “that you’d run away and not want to be noticed, I mean, having a baby under these circumstances.”
What? What did he know about her circumstances? “Who sent you?” she demanded, moving her hand to her head, refusing to keel over, refusing to fall down and die for one too-smart guy, no matter how spectacular his eyes or his smile. So she went on the offensive while her mind raced with choices. Try to buy him off? Threaten? First she’d better find out what she was dealing with. “Are you a P.I.? Is that it? Did Julian hire you to find me? Or Shelby?”
He narrowed his eyes. “No.”
“I didn’t think it would be either of them, but… Okay, then, so you’re a reporter. National Enquirer?”
“No.” He just kept staring at her, his gaze rapt and intense, as if he could see right under her clothes, all the way to the soul, as if every secret she’d ever had was easy pickings. He held that gaze—and his silence—till she wanted to throttle him. Or herself.
“Stop staring at me like that. It’s unnerving. And if you don’t tell me who you are right this minute, I’m going to scream for the cops,” she improvised. “You already said you’ve been stalking me.”
“I wasn’t stalking you.” He brushed that away with one impatient hand, as if the idea of her calling the police was nothing to him. “Listen, my name is Sean Calhoun.” He seemed to be watching her even more closely, to see if that name registered. Not as far as she knew. When she didn’t react, he said again, “I wasn’t stalking you. Just surveilling.”
“Surveilling isn’t even a word.” So he wasn’t from Julian or Shelby. Not from the Enquirer. Who else could it be? The Post wouldn’t send a reporter this far, would they? And no reporter worth his salt would use a word like “surveilling.”
Sean Calhoun, whoever he was, waited patiently, just watching her, not bothering to argue about the “surveilling” thing.
“Just tell me,” she snapped. “Who sent you?”
“Well, if you must know, my mother,” he said finally.
Maybe that would’ve made sense under better circumstances. Did he just say his mother? “Are you kidding? Why? Is she a fan?”
“Uh, no. Definitely not,” he responded with an edge of sarcasm that didn’t add up any more than the rest of it.
What, he was stalking her because she’d given advice his mom didn’t like on The Shelby Show? “I don’t need this right now,” she told him, pressing one hand into her tummy and waving the other one at him. “I’m sick as a dog, I don’t know who you are, and… And I’m not coping very well!”
“Okay, okay.” He advanced on her again, holding up his hands—with her baseball cap in one and her coat draped over the other—as if to show he didn’t have a weapon. “I’m not going to hurt you in any way, okay? You need to just calm down.”
“I hate it when people tell me to calm down!” Abra returned hotly. “Not that anyone ever needed to before this whole mess, because I was always perfectly calm. Not that they need to now, either, for that matter. It’s none of your business whether I’m calm or not!”
After that outburst, which sounded irrational even to her own ears, he muttered an oath, turned away, and then spun back around, his expression dark and brooding. “Look, I just need to know one thing and then I won’t bother you anymore. The baby…”
She kept her mouth shut, staring at the ground, refusing to confirm or acknowledge anything.
Finally, he came out with it. “Is it my father’s?”
She swung back around to look at him, utterly and completely mystified. His father? She didn’t know him or his father. Why on earth would he think her baby had anything to do with his father? “Who is your father?”
“Michael Calhoun.”
“But I’ve never met…”
“Park benches? Chicago?” he prompted.
“No!” she returned quickly. What in the world was this all about? “Me? Park benches? Chicago? No!”
He kept up the interrogation. “Were you at O’Hare a few days ago? Asking about buses to Champaign?”
“Yes, I came though O’Hare. But I don’t under—” Until all at once, gazing at him and his suspicious expression, it sunk in.
He thinks I’m someone else.
Could she be that lucky? Abra scrutinized him, adding up the clues. He didn’t appear to be delusional, so the logical conclusion was that it was a simple mistake.
He wanted to know if his father was the father of her baby. And hadn’t he said his mother had sent him? Of course she did, if she thought her husband was cheating and making babies. But not with Abra Holloway, because no one would be looking for Abra here. With some other woman. So Mom had sent him to find the woman her husband was cheating with, and for some reason, he’d gotten his signals crossed and thought that woman was her.
Which meant he had no idea that he’d stumbled over Abra Holloway, missing celebrity. None at all.
Filled with relief and a strange sense of euphoria, Abra began to laugh. Considering the circumstances, it was a little weird to be hooting with laughter, but she couldn’t help it. She could tell by Sean’s expression that her reaction had taken him by surprise, too.
He thought she was someone else. Phew.
“I’m sorry,” she managed, finally getting herself under control. “I’m sorry you’re going through whatever it is you’re going through with your parents. I’m sure it’s not easy being sent to stalk your dad’s illicit girlfriend.”
“Wait a minute—”
But Abra kept on talking. “You have my sympathies. Really. But I can promise you that I am not in any way involved in your family’s domestic drama.”
“You’re sure?” he persisted. “Because you look like—”
“I don’t care who I look like. I’m not her.” Now she was starting to get mad. “I’ve never met you, I’ve never met your father, and I can’t think of even one Calhoun in my acquaintance.”
“Maybe he used a different name,” he tried.
“Not under any name. It may surprise you, but I do actually know with whom I have been, um, intimate.” She leaned over far enough to grab her baseball cap out of his hand and secure it on her head, and then she reached for her coat, but he held it away. “My fiancé is thirty years old and he lives in New York. What are you, twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”
He nodded.
“So even if I did think that Julian had a double life and a secret family in Chicago, which is absurd, he’s not old enough to be your father. Satisfied?”
He seemed to consider the issue, which only made her angrier.
“It’s not me!” she repeated, more forcefully this time. “And that’s far more of my personal business than you need to know.”
He didn’t say anything, just looked pensive.
“This is insulting,” she muttered. “Do I really look like the sort of person who would sleep with a married man twice her age? And have assignations on park benches? It’s so trashy!”
Now that she had worked through panic, relief and hysteria, a new emotion was starting to set in. Ever since she’d figured out she was pregnant, it had been like this, tripping from one emotional quagmire into the next.
So here she was, Abra Holloway, media star, beginning to feel a little aggravated that her gorgeous rescuer, so concerned, holding her coat, feeling her forehead, didn’t recognize the real her.
Of course, if he did recognize her, it would’ve been a disaster beyond disasters. But now that he didn’t, she was free to feel insulted.
But not insulted enough to stick around long enough for him to figure it out. Collecting herself, she snatched her coat away from him. She couldn’t bear to put it back on, but she crumpled it into her arms as she began to look around for her missing sunglasses. “Where are they? My sunglasses fell off when I started to…”
“I think you stepped on them,” Sean offered. “They’re in three pieces. Over there.”
Ah well. It was too late for sunglasses or any other disguise. Sean Calhoun had already seen way too much of her.
“Okay, well, never mind. Thank you for your help. Good luck with your, uh, situation. With your father, I mean.” Abra swept away from the tree, past Sean Calhoun, her head held high. But she couldn’t help turning back.
“What?” he asked. “What is it?”
She really shouldn’t. But she did. Quickly, she offered, “My suggestion is that you open up lines of communication within the family, maybe even go in for family counseling with both your parents. Instead of sneaking around following women you think might be the one, just ask your father if he has a girlfriend. And then take it from there. That’s my advice.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Thanks. I think,” he said after a moment. Was that a smile playing around his lips again?
“You’re, uh, welcome,” she murmured.
Nice mouth, she noted, letting her eyes linger there longer than she should’ve. Excellent mouth, actually. It wasn’t her fault that it had been way too long since she’d been kissed and she was really hungry for it. It wasn’t her fault there were enzymes running through her veins that made her think constantly about hot sex and sweat-slick skin and moist lips and clever hands and strong arms and… Other parts. Was it?
She touched her tongue to her own lip, still gazing at his. His mouth was a bit quirky where it turned up on the edges, with adorable little peaks in the center of his top lip, but with just enough softness to his bottom lip to make her think he would be a majorly good kisser.
She shook it off. Why would she think that? He might be a terrible kisser. Just because his lips looked good didn’t mean they would feel good or taste good…
Uh-oh. The idea of feeling and tasting his mouth was too overwhelming, too complicated, too altogether luscious. As she actually entertained the concept of grabbing him and kissing him just to find out, she realized she was feeling disappointed that she might never see him again and never find out if her theory about his kissable mouth was right or not.
Insanity. True insanity.
Grimly pressing her lips together, Abra did her best to damp down her crazy feelings. She spun back around and got away from there—and away from him—before she noticed anything else about him she wanted to touch or feel or taste. Yikes! Hormones were driving her around the bend.
That was her story and she was sticking to it. Blame it all on hormones. It couldn’t be that Sean Calhoun was an extraordinarily attractive man and she was feeling vulnerable and needy. Heavens, no. And certainly not that he was exuding sex appeal all over the place from his moody blue eyes and hot body, making her mouth water with the possibilities.
Nope. Just hormones.
She remembered at the last moment to scoop back across the Quad to pick up her tote bag, the scattered cracker packets, and the rumpled copy of Great Expectations: Managing Your Pregnancy that she’d ripped the cover off of. It was a miracle her things were still there. But after the day she’d had, she deserved one little miracle.
Were Sean Calhoun’s eyes still following her? How long had he been out there, watching her every move? And how could she not have noticed?
She didn’t dare look back to where she’d left him. But she could feel him there, still connected to her in some bizarre way, his gaze touching her, his thoughts wrapping around her.
Oh, yeah. Abra shivered. She could definitely feel him. But not enough. Not nearly enough.
As she paused there on the Quad, desperate to run, desperate to stay, all she could think about was all the ways she wanted to feel him. His hands and his mouth on her bare skin, her hands and her mouth on his. All of him, hard around her, tangled with her, doing terrible, wicked and exciting things.
Feel him? Oh, yeah. She could really get into that.
4
AS HE WATCHED HER walk away, Sean stayed where he was, juggling a mystifying mix of feelings. First was attraction. Which was really strange. He couldn’t remember ever being knocked back by this kind of steamy chemistry the first time he met someone. Especially not a furtive and secretive pregnant woman with a bad attitude and worst case of morning sickness. How could that be attractive? And yet on her it was. Amazingly so.
It was his job to notice things, and he definitely saw the same feelings staring back at him from her eyes. Sparks of excitement and awareness were there every time she glanced at him, in the way her gaze seemed to flicker up and down his body, in the way her pretty pink tongue darted out to moisten her lips.
In short, she kept looking at him like she wanted to eat him up with whipped cream and a cherry on top. And it made him want to find the spoons.
“She’s pregnant, you idiot. With someone else’s kid. You can’t be attracted to her.” Frustrated, he swore out loud. He had no clue how to handle that one.
But there was also relief. Yes, he was relieved she’d claimed never to have met his father, and yes, he believed her. He’d spent his adult life judging whether people were telling him the truth, plus there was that “uncanny knack” thing. Both common sense and intuition told him that her panic at having been found out was real, but so was her confusion when he’d mentioned his dad.
If he’d decided once upon a time that he was about eighty percent sure she was the tootsie Bebe had seen in the park, now, after talking to her, he was about ninety percent sure she wasn’t.
Okay, so if he analyzed his feelings, he found attraction and he found relief. But there was also frustration, not just the sexual part, but because he couldn’t figure her out. At all. And he found himself really, really needing to do just that.
“Thank God she’s not messing around with the old man,” he said out loud. “But then… Who the heck is she?”
She’d mentioned a fiancé in New York, but she had no rings. And what was she doing in downstate Illinois, pregnant and alone, with nothing better to do than hide behind a terrible disguise as she sat on the Quad and moped? He’d watched her long enough to be sure she wasn’t teaching or taking a class or even doing research at the university’s famous library. All she did was hang out under trees, eat junk food, stare into space, and go back home. So what did it get her to be in Champaign-Urbana instead of back in New York or wherever she lived? Why the obvious disguise? And why was she giving off sexual energy that knocked his socks off? As well as other, murkier vibes that made him think she was in trouble with a capital T?
“She’s got the vibes all right,” he muttered, trying to get his mind off the total package of curves and conundrums he found so fascinating. There was just something about this woman, something hungry, something haughty, something…hot.
He could feel the heat down to his bones.
She wasn’t blatant at all, but there was a major league come-on happening that he wasn’t sure she was even aware of. Provocative and innocent, all at the same time. It was a potent package.
Still letting the questions tumble around in his brain, Sean adjusted his position so he could keep her in view. She had the hat back on, but not the coat, and he had to say, now that he had the back view, that he could personally attest to the fact that she provided some very nice scenery. The swing of her hair, the frisky way she walked… And her butt. Sweet. It wasn’t polite, but he couldn’t take his eyes off that round bottom, temptingly displayed in some kind of shiny grayish pants that were cut just low enough and tight enough to display delicious curves.
She was in a hurry now, bending over to stuff things into her tote bag, offering him an even more tantalizing view. Sean groaned. He had a habit of sitting back, judging, sifting through the facts with all due deliberation, but this was one time he really wanted to just leap into action.
Whatever was going on with her, he liked what he saw. A lot. And every instinct he had was telling him to follow up, press on, keep this connection humming, even if it was strange and weird and convoluted. Let’s see, so far, he’d spied on her, practically leered at her, and mistaken her for what his mother had called a “cheap piece of Christmas trash,” while she’d made her way through forty-seven packets of saltines and then possibly thrown up on a tree.
He was in the wrong place with the wrong woman; she was pregnant and toting a whole lot of baggage. Not exactly an auspicious beginning.
Thankfully, she didn’t stay in that beautiful bottoms-up position long, hustling away from the Quad as if that reporter from the Enquirer she was afraid of were nipping at her heels. As she disappeared past the Foreign Language Building, down the campus street that he knew would lead her home, Sean set his jaw. Whoever she was, she was certainly a whole barrel of contradictions.
If her life was such a mess that she needed to sit under a tree and ponder it every day, why did she hand out advice to strangers with such practiced ease? When she’d whipped into guidance-counselor mode, all that Ann Landers-meets-Dr. Phil stuff about the Calhouns going in for family counseling and opening up lines of communication, she’d seemed like a whole different person.
Sean knew very well it was none of his business if an unknown woman with a penchant for advising strangers decided to leave her fiancé and have her baby alone, wherever she chose, in whatever clothing and hair color she chose. But there were so many facets of this mystery he found fascinating. Like Julian, the missing fiancé.
“Julian,” Sean said derisively. “Who has a fiancé named Julian?”
But posing that question made him think about its implications. He narrowed his eyes. She had mentioned people named Julian and Shelby, as well as The National Enquirer. He was steps away from his hotel and his car. If he wanted to find out who the common denominator was between Julian, Shelby and the Enquirer, all he had to do was find the public library and a computer and run a quick Google search. What would it take, three seconds?
Making up his mind, Sean turned in the opposite direction, back toward the Union, keeping his hands in his pockets and his pace steady. No point in hurrying back and calling attention to himself. Julian, Shelby and The National Enquirer. Piece of cake. He liked having a path to follow, an investigation to begin. It made him feel a whole lot less unsettled. And he expected to have all the info he needed in no time at all.
SAFELY BACK AT THE sweet little house she was subletting, Abra was stewing. It wasn’t as if stewing were a new thing for her, just that she had a new subject to stew about. Instead of angsting over the baby and Julian and her career and where she could possibly go from here, now she was worried about one Sean Calhoun, how much he knew, and when he knew it. And where she could possibly go from here.
“Damn it, anyway,” she swore, getting up from the kitchen table to root in the fridge. She was starving again. She had a taste for ice cream, and nothing but Chunky Monkey, with the banana and the chocolate and the walnuts, would do. Of course she had none. She’d already eaten four pints of the stuff in two days, and she was going to have to make a run to the grocery store for more. But she didn’t have a car, so she was limited to what she could carry on foot or on the bus. At the moment, she was going through this particular ice cream faster than she could store it.
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