"Only about getting out of here." He pulled his hand off the door handle, which happened to be a little too close to Miranda"s b.u.t.t. Her gloating smile shouted that she knew it, too.
He crossed his arms over his chest.
She flicked her wavy blond hair over her shoulder. "Your quitting wouldn"t have something to do with our
little misunderstanding, would it?"Do ya" think? "Nah. It"s just what I said."
"About the misunderstanding part, you misunderstood that, too." She hooked a finger in the chain around her neck, sawed it back and forth, bringing the charm up from between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "So much misunderstanding going on. I"m not saying anything bad happened, but if you go around shooting" your mouth off, people are going to think something did happen."
She kept on stroking that chain, the dangling charm swaying, the red circle with a black triangle in the middle a freaking hypnotizing eye magnet straight down to her- He jerked his gaze away. Up to her face.
"My reputation will be a mess, Chris. Word gets around, doors will close for me. Word will get around about you, too. People will think you just got away with it, but that you"re really a mule. A carrier."
He swallowed down fear and a hefty whiff of her perfume. How could he have ever thought she smelled
good? "I didn"t have any idea what was going on."
"If you go to the cops with what you think you saw, and say there was something bad going on, do you think they"re going to believe you"re innocent? They"re going to think you"re trying to save your skin."
She dropped the necklace back to rest against her tanned skin. "And if, just if, something big really was
going on, don"t you think the people you"re dealing with might be smarter than you?"
Straightening from the car, she flattened a hand to his face and patted. "But guys who play nice don"t get hurt."
Miranda stroked her fingers along his chin on her way past, leaving him standing alone by the car wondering how in the h.e.l.l he ever could have thought Miranda Casale was hot. She was a freaking snake in Lyrca. His cheek itched where she"d touched him.
As his dad would say, he was in a c.r.a.pload of trouble.
Chris jerked open the car door, double-checked the back seat to make sure it was empty and climbed behind the wheel.
Locked the doors really fast.
Part of him wanted to crawl away and hide. Okay, most of him wanted to do that, but he"d been hiding
for a couple of weeks now. Instead of getting better, things were getting worse.
He felt like puking. But he wouldn"t. He would be like his dad. This was the time to be a man.
He would have to come clean.
G.o.d, did Miranda really think he was stupid enough to believe nothing was going on? If there had been
any doubts before, her little chat cinched it for him.
If he"d been a mule once-his stomach roiled-then they would use that as leverage to make him do other things. Maybe worse things.
Sweat popped on his forehead, feeding his zits. He would have to do something. He would have to talk
to his dad after his flight.
Used to be he could talk to his mom easier, but his dad and even Mr. Haugen were both right about keeping women safe. A pregnant chick needed to be protected most of all. No question, his dad wouldn"t want this dumped on her. His dad also wouldn"t want her left at home alone with this kind of c.r.a.p hanging over their heads.
The car accident.
Sweat iced. His stomach pitched. Chris scrambled for the handle, stumbling out of the car with half a second to spare before he lost his supper on the gravel.
Doubled over, gripping his knees, he gasped for clean air that didn"t stink like Miranda"s cologne, fried fish and a screwed-up life.
G.o.d. What a wuss. He dragged the tail of his T-shirt over his mouth and staggered back into the car.
He didn"t have time to be sick. He needed to get home to his mom. And if he wanted to make it there without more pit stops to heave up his guts, he couldn"t think about what might happen next.
Rena flipped pages of her gardening magazine, reclining on the sofa, her head propped by two pillows, her feet up on the armrest. Hot chamomile tea steamed on the coffee table. Cool air conditioner blew through the silence. A totally peaceful way to end the day.
If it weren"t for the fact one of those pillows under her head carried J.T."s scent.
He"d always had a distinctive air. Earthy, s.e.xy. And, ohmiG.o.d, how pregnancy heightened her sense of smell, leaving her all the more susceptible to the woodsy soap swirl curling through her with each inhale.
She flipped pages, lingered on an herb garden layout. Odd how smells became a.s.sociated with emotions. She"d been pruning her oregano plant when she"d heard about J.T. overseas. She still couldn"t eat spaghetti.
But a single sniff of J.T."s soap, and she found her eyes drifting shut so she could isolate that one intense sensation. Remember the very second she"d met the man and he"d bombarded all her senses. The magazine flopped onto her chest.
In those days, he"d been a C-141 loadmaster, stationed in New Jersey. She and three friends from her private girls" school had piled into her car and driven over the New York state line for a peek at those flyboys at their air show.
One look at J.T. and she was toast. She still firmly believed she would have fallen for him, no matter what her background. She hadn"t felt the same tug to any of the other fly-boys that day.
But her past had made her a pure sitting duck for the explosive attraction that rolled over her the first time she saw him. She didn"t stand a chance thanks to the combination of her all-girl environment and lack of experience. What teenage boy would risk her father"s displeasure by dating her?
J.T. had quietly dared plenty when it came to risking her family"s "displeasure," and she would have loved him for that alone.
Still she could remember the feel of his hand on her elbow as he"d steadied her along the back ramp into the plane. And then he"d been waiting for her when she exited the side hatch. She never knew who he"d convinced to take over for him, but suddenly he was free to escort her around the air show.
He"d bought her a hamburger and she totally forgot what fillet mignon tasted like, just knew nothing could be as good as that charbroiled burger mixed with her first taste of love.
The telephone rang, jarring her out of her fog.
She pitched the magazine onto the coffee table, reaching for the cordless phone beside her teacup.
"h.e.l.lo?"
"Hey, babe, it"s me." J.T."s voice rumbled through the receiver.
Her elbow tingled with the phantom memory and d.a.m.ned if she didn"t crave a hamburger.
Tucking the phone under her chin, she sank deeper into her pillows, releasing a fresh whiff of J.T. "Hey
there to you, too. I thought you were supposed to take off an hour ago."
"Weather delay. We"re leaving soon though. Thought I"d check in to see how your doctor"s appointment went today." She stifled down defensiveness. Just because he cared about the baby didn"t mean he wasn"t concerned about her, too. The two weren"t mutually exclusive. "Everything looks good-really looks good. They did an ultrasound."
"Ah h.e.l.l, I wish I could have been there."
"I have a picture here for you. It shows so much more than we saw with Nikki and Chris. The newer technology is amazing."
"Then it"s probably not a waste, after all, that we got rid of the old baby things, what with the improved stuff on the market."
"Picking out the new furnishings will be fun." Would they do it together?
"I guess it was too early to tell if it"s a boy or girl."
"Yeah, in a couple more weeks, though."
"I want to go with you to your next appointment."
The quiet request shouted his resolve. He loved his kids. Her heart ached for him and what she knew he wanted. "No matter how things turn out, I understand this is your baby, too. You should be there."
He didn"t answer for a second, the phone lines filled only with background voices from the squadron.
Finally, his exhale echoed. "Thank you for that."
Guilt tweaked, hard, as it had done when she"d grieved over J.T. ringing the doorbell at his own house.
He was a good man. Even if he frustrated the h.e.l.l out of her, she couldn"t deny his honor, strength. He deserved better from life.
She could at least give him more today. "If you believe old wives" tales, then the baby"s heart rate indicates this one"s a boy."
"Another boy, huh? Either way"s great by me. We haven"t talked about names or anything yet. Do you have any ideas, family names?"
She"d named Chris and Nikki after an aunt and uncle she"d visited, respected, wanting to give her kids something positive from her side of the family. "What about your family this time? Or have you changed your mind since Chris was born about not having a James Taggart Price Jr.?"
"No junior," he answered without hesitation. "Going through school as Price Tag is a tough moniker."
One that stuck through to Air Force days with his call sign. She"d never considered the irony of it before, given his constant worries about money. "Okay, no junior. I"ll pick up a couple of baby-name books and we can make lists."
A dangerous little emotion called hope started to flutter inside her. He really was trying. He"d been working hard to relate better with Chris, like during their talk in the garage.
Except she might be better off not thinking about the garage and a half-naked J.T. in workout clothes, arms and legs muscled, bared, sheened with sweat.
"Rena? Are you still there?"
"Oh, yeah, sorry. I was, uh, I don"t know. I must have zoned out. No offense. You remember those near-narcoleptic moments of the first trimester."
His chuckle rumbled through the phone line and vibrated inside her. "I"ll be quiet when I come in so I don"t wake you."
Uh-oh. Too easily she could envision the times he had woken her after a flight. His eyes intense, charged, adrenaline all but dripping from him, and then he would pour all that intensity into making love to her, like in the kitchen after his return from Guam.
To this day, she couldn"t look at that stenciled ivy without remembering the heat of him moving against her, in her, bringing her to a screaming release at eleven o"clock in the morning. Yeah, she even still remembered the exact time.
"Hey, Rena? I hear Scorch calling for me. Time to roll. See you when you wake up in the morning. Good night."
The line went dead.
"Good night," she whispered, keeping the phone cradled under her chin for a silly sentimental moment before she thumbed the Off b.u.t.ton.
Her eyes drifted closed. She inhaled his scent to mix with the sound of his voice still in her head and drifted into that twilight restfulness, neither asleep nor fully awake, when thoughts took their own direction. Remembering the summer weeks after she"d met J.T. when they"d stolen every moment possible together. Every time they"d said goodbye on her porch or hung up the phone, she"d been certain she would die if she couldn"t be with him forever.
Teenage melodrama? Maybe. But also intense and wonderful.
Then one night, parked by the sh.o.r.e, they hadn"t been able to wait any longer. Tugging the zipper down on his flight suit, her hands found their way inside.