A Baby Between Them

“Then I’ll walk.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

And because her head throbbed and her stomach roiled, she opened the door and left the room, Carl close on her heels.

It was a drizzly day outside. As Carl went to the front desk, she perused the lobby. Several people were standing or sitting in chairs in front of a big, hooded fireplace. She longed to be one of them, longed to go stand by the fire without Carl hovering nearby.

Her gaze met the gray eyes of a man in his thirties. He was tall and solid-looking, wearing boots, jeans and a black sweater. His hair was dark and thick, combed away from his face. His features were attractive, his mouth perfectly formed, but it was the intensity of his gaze that held her, that sent her left hand up to her cheek. His gaze grew even more piercing and a trill of excitement sputtered along her skin.

She looked away at once, but for some reason looked back. He had turned to stare at the fire.

“Ready?” Carl asked.

She startled.

“The clerk at the desk told me there’s a nice clothing store less than a mile from here. Come on.”

SIMON WAITED UNTIL HE SAW the taillights go on in their car before he left the building and ran to his truck. Within a few moments he’d caught up with them on the main drag.

A brisk, overcast Tuesday morning in April wasn’t exactly high tourist time, he discovered, and wished there were a few more cars around. He’d already announced himself by allowing Ella to notice him staring at her. He couldn’t afford another sighting.

But he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. Her hair was short and dark, a fringe of bangs somewhat obscuring bruises and a bandage, framing her deep blue eyes. She’d looked wistful, vulnerable in a way he’d seen her look so few times. He’d wanted to walk up to her, talk with her, see if she knew who he was, ask her to explain what was happening.

Of course, he hadn’t, and when she’d raised her hand to her face in an almost shy gesture, he finally noticed the sparkle of gold on her finger.

She wore a wedding ring. And the man who had come up to her wore one, too. A tall man with long fair hair, chiseled features and a hustler’s tilt to his head.

Damn.

Simon hung back a block until he saw the turn signal on the rental. By the time he turned the same corner, the man was helping Ella out of the car. Simon pulled up to the curb half a block away and watched as they entered a building.

The man. Ella’s husband. Carl Baxter. Call him what he was. But why had Ella dyed her hair? She had to have done it before the accident; surely she wouldn’t use dye with scratches and wounds on her head, but again, why? Her hair was a source of pride for her, at least it had been, so why whack it off unless to disguise herself?

After getting rid of you, maybe she just wanted a change, an inner voice suggested.

Simon pulled his sweater over his head and put on the denim jacket he kept in the backseat, then snatched a green baseball cap out of a side pocket. As disguises went, it wasn’t great, but it was as good as he could do without risking losing them, and he wasn’t going to chance that. He darted across the street.

The inside of the store wasn’t exactly booming with customers, but it was jammed with racks of clothes that seemed to go from floor to ceiling. The clutter made lurking a little safer. He’d just make sure they were in here to actually look at clothes, and then he’d leave and stake out the exterior.

Cap pulled low on his forehead, he caught sight of Ella fingering a rack of blue-green sweaters. It was his favorite color on her.

She took one of the sweaters off the rack and held it up against her supple body, the soft material at once clinging to her breasts and evoking a million erotic memories. It was a long garment and as she turned to look at herself in the mirror, he felt his breath catch in his throat. The night they first met came stampeding into his head and heart like a locomotive off its tracks.

Carl Baxter chose that moment to take the blue sweater from her hands and thrust a yellow one at her.

Simon immediately turned around and left the store, retracing his steps to the truck, where he took out his cell phone. He made two calls. One to work to request a few days’ vacation and the other to an old friend. Then he hunkered down to wait.

“YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL,” Carl said, placing his hands on her shoulders and leaning down to kiss the nape of her neck. He was standing behind her as she faced the mirror, trying to arrange her hair to hide her abrasions and bandages.

She didn’t really like the look of the yellow against her skin, and Carl’s lips left her cold, which made her ashamed of herself. As he raised his head and their gazes locked in the reflection of the mirror, she said, “Do we have a good marriage, Carl?”

He smiled. “Of course we have a good marriage.”

“Then why won’t you tell me about it? You know, about one of our days, maybe. A Saturday, for instance. Tell me what we do on a Saturday when I don’t have to go to work at the…”

He laughed. “Trying to trick me into telling you what you do for a living?”

“Can’t you just throw me a bone? What do you do for a living?”

“Why this preoccupation with jobs?”

“I don’t know, I just feel so lost waiting around, I want to do something. I want to know what I used to do, what we did as a couple.”

He moved away toward the door. “Let’s go.”

“Carl—”

“You haven’t eaten all day. You must be starving.”

“But the reservation—”

“Is for an hour from now, I know, but they serve wine and cheese before dinner in the lobby. A little wine will do you good.”

“With my head injury?” she said.

“One glass won’t hurt.”

There was just no point in arguing with him. The man never said or did one thing he didn’t want to say or do, seldom let her out of his sight. We better have a good marriage, she thought as she walked past him into the hall, because if we don’t, I’m going to divorce him when I get my memory back.

Though she would hardly admit it to herself, there was someone she was hoping to see again and that was the man from the morning. He wasn’t in the lobby, however. She took a seat near the fire, the gray late-afternoon skies pressing against the tall windows at her back. Carl walked over to the informal buffet as she looked around the spacious room, glancing at the half dozen other guests sipping wine and laughing.

What would it be like to laugh? Did she laugh a lot? Was she morose or happy or contemplative?

One thing Carl was right about was the return of her appetite. It was back with a vengeance, and as she accepted a small plate covered with cheese and crackers and grapes, she noticed a tall man walk into the lobby from the outside and veer toward the front desk.

“Wine?” Carl said, and she accepted a glass of chilled white wine and set it on the table next to her plate. He stood by her seat, looking down at her as he sipped a dark red Cabernet and she tried a cracker slathered with creamy Brie. Why didn’t he sit, why did he hover? She looked surreptitiously toward the desk, but the tall man was gone.

It had been the man from the morning, she was sure of it, the one with the gray eyes.

At that moment, a woman approached Carl. “Are you Mr. Baxter?” she asked.

He looked down his long nose at the woman who was wearing a hotel uniform identifying her as an employee. “Yes.”

“Sir, we’ve been alerted your car has two very flat front tires. Would you come with me?”

Carl looked down at Eleanor and then back at the employee and said, “Just have it fixed. I’m not leaving my wife alone—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Carl,” Eleanor snapped. “I’m not a child, I think I can sit here for ten minutes while you take care of an emergency.”

He looked toward the parking lot, down at her and back again. The employee said, “It’ll only take a few minutes, sir. We need insurance information.”

“It’s your damn parking lot,” Carl fumed.

“Yes, sir, but it’s well posted that your car is your responsibility. Not that we won’t assist you, of course.”

Carl set his glass down beside Eleanor’s. “Stay here,” he commanded, and marched off behind the woman and out the front door, glancing over his shoulder at Eleanor twice before he was out of sight.

Almost at once, a man sat on the chair beside her. His gray gaze delving right into hers, he said, “Your husband seems upset.”

“It’s you,” she said, and realizing how lame that sounded, added, “I saw you this morning.”

“I saw you, too,” he said.

“You were staring at me.”

“Yes. Well, I thought you might be someone I knew.”

She leaned forward a little. “Really? Maybe I am.”

“I don’t quite get your meaning,” he said with a smile, his voice playful.

She shrugged. “I had an accident a few days ago and my memory is a little blurred.”

“A little?”

“A lot.”

His voice dropped as he said, “Is that why your husband never leaves your side?”

She nodded very slowly and reached for her wineglass. The stranger’s hand was suddenly there, as well. Somehow her glass sailed to the floor, spilling its contents. “I’m sorry,” he said, producing a napkin or two and blotting her shoe. The rest of the liquid was quickly absorbed into the plush carpet. He set the unbroken glass back on the table and added, “Probably better not to drink when you’ve recently bashed your head, I suppose.”

“I agree. I really didn’t want it.”

“Then why were you reaching for it?”

She met his eyes and smiled. “Because I didn’t know how to respond to your observation about my husband. Have you ever noticed how you tend to do something with your hands when you don’t know what to say?”

“I have noticed that,” he said, his gaze once again penetrating. She should probably look away. She couldn’t. Their conversation was harmless enough, but she found herself enjoying it in a way she hadn’t enjoyed anything in days. She liked talking to this man. He made her feel something inside, made her feel less alone. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Simon.”

“Just Simon?”

He brushed her gold wedding band with his fingertip. “Just Simon. What’s yours?”

“Eleanor.”

He withdrew his hand and she swallowed. Her reactions to this guy were giving her one of the few glimpses she’d had of her gut-level personality. She wore one man’s ring and that man swore they had a good marriage. And yet she flirted with another man and wished she had no husband.

“Tell me about the woman you thought I resembled,” she said.

Simon glanced toward the front door and then back at her. “I was in love with her once,” he said.

“That sounds sad. Something happened between you?”

“Yes. Something happened.”

“What was she like?”

“Well, let’s see. She was very pretty, like you. She liked to garden, especially vegetables. Everything grew for her. And she liked to cook.”

“She sounds like a homebody,” Eleanor said.

“Kind of, yes.”

“What did she do, you know, for a living?”

“She worked at a radio station, had her own show in the afternoons on Saturday. Gardening tips, food advice, stuff like that. She also had a slew of odd jobs because she said she didn’t want to get stuck doing one thing forever.”

“What kind of odd jobs?”

“Once she painted a mural on the side of an office building and once she walked dogs and house-sat. She also taught a few classes at the junior college and volunteered at an old folks’ home. Stuff like that.”

Eleanor smiled. “She sounds nice. What happened, you know, between you two?” As he looked away from her face, she chided herself and added, “I’m sorry. That was way too personal. I don’t remember anything about myself, so maybe that’s why I’m so caught up in hearing about this woman you’re describing. Don’t tell me any more, it’s none of my business.”

He opened his mouth, seemed to think better, and closed it. “How long are you staying here, Eleanor?”

“Until tomorrow,” she said. “Carl insisted we stay through today.”

“Then where are you headed? Home?”

“I wish,” she said.

“You sound homesick. Been away long?”

“How do I know?” she said, turning beseeching eyes on him. “I don’t know for sure when we left home or even exactly where home is except for the address on my driver’s license.”

“You don’t remember anything about it?”

“No. The address on my husband’s license is different from mine. When I asked him why, he told me we’ve moved recently. That’s all he’ll say.”

“If you want to go home so badly, why don’t you?”

“Because the doctor said we should stay away until my memory returns. Carl won’t tell me anything about myself. He says it’s supposed to come back naturally.”

“Makes it kind of hard for you, doesn’t it?” he said.

“I feel lost.”

“I bet you do,” he said, his gaze once again holding hers.

“How about you?” she said softly.

“I’m not sure about my plans, either.” His gaze swiveled to the doors again, and he got to his feet quickly. “I see your husband stomping across the parking lot. He looks pretty angry.”

“I’m beginning to think he’s angry quite often,” she said, instantly awash in guilt. She added, “He’s taking very good care of me. It can’t be much fun for him.”

“You underestimate yourself,” he said, and then as Carl pushed his way through the front doors, the man with the gray eyes disappeared toward the elevators.

Simon was right. Carl looked mad enough to kill someone.

Chapter Three

“So you agree she shouldn’t be told she’s pregnant?”

On the other end of the line, his cousin Virginia, a practicing psychologist in Chicago, paused for a second before saying, “Without knowing the specifics of her case, I don’t know what to think. In associational therapy, the patient is exposed to familiar surroundings in hopes it stimulates the brain’s neural synapses. Isolation from personal recollections seems counterintuitive, but if you know she’s pregnant and sense trouble in her marriage—”

“If there is a marriage,” Simon interjected.

“You said your partner on the force is checking into that, right?”

“Not my partner, no. I can’t get Mike into a compromising position on the off chance Ella did something illegal before she left Blue Mountain.” Or since then, for that matter….

“Then who did you call?”

“A private investigator I worked with a few years back.”

“You’re sure Ella isn’t faking amnesia?”

“I’m positive. The only way the woman I know could react to things the way this woman does is if she wasn’t aware of herself or her past. She’s not faking.”

“Okay. So, for now, all you know is she’s with a man who was able to convince the police and the hospital he’s her husband, which means he either planned her abduction very carefully or he is her husband—”

“In which case there is no mystery, just me jumping to conclusions,” Simon finished for her. And yet her husband had told Ella they’d just moved to Blue Mountain, which was a lie. Ella had lived there for at least two or three years.

Virginia cleared her throat. “Didn’t your mother tell me you and Ella were no longer a couple? In fact, you broke up with her just a week or so ago, didn’t you?”

Simon stared out at the ocean and sighed. “Well, I guess you could say I broke up with her. She’d gotten even more secretive than usual and we had some words and I realized it was over.”

“So maybe what you’re feeling is guilt mixed with anger,” she said softly.

“Huh?”

“Guilt for rejecting her. Then you find she has a husband all along and so really, she’s the one who rejected you. That’s why she wouldn’t talk about her past and why you felt shut out of her life. Hence the anger.”

“My mother has a big mouth.”

“She talks to my mom, you know how it is.”

He glowered at the moon sparkling over the sea and didn’t respond. Spending the night staking out the parking lot wasn’t his idea of a good time, but he figured it would serve a couple of purposes, and face it, he was anxious to get this settled in his mind and go home.

Home. “Ginny, do you think I should tell Ella who I am and ask her if she wants to come back with me? Give her a choice?”

“No. I can’t advise distressing her when she’s so lost already. Don’t do anything to alarm her or frighten her. Listen, do you want me to call the admitting hospital and see if I can find out anything about her condition?”

“Will they talk to you?”

“I’ll give it a try. I might know someone here who knows someone there. Call me back tomorrow night about this time, okay? Her name is Eleanor Baxter, right?”

“Yeah. Middle name Ann. Thanks, Ginny.”

“Just be careful.”

“Careful? Careful of what?”

“Think about it, coz,” she said, and rang off.

He pocketed his cell phone and tried to get comfortable. He was parked across the row and three cars down from the Baxter rental so he could easily keep an eye on it.

And then he did his best not to think about Ella, but that was almost impossible.

She was different and it wasn’t just the hair color. She was more open, as though not remembering her past had freed her from the burden of keeping it secret. She reminded him of the woman he’d fallen in love with, practically at first sight.

He got the feeling she wasn’t too happy about her husband. For that matter, neither was Simon, who had seen the bastard hand Ella that glass of wine. Ella didn’t know she was pregnant, but according to the wrecker’s wife, Carl did, so what was he doing giving a pregnant woman alcohol?

That was Simon’s baby she was carrying, and it pissed him off.

At least he thought it was his baby.

But she’d been hiding something for the past couple of weeks, something that had her edgy, nervous…

He switched positions. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to get Ella alone again. The tire trick had worked once; it wouldn’t work again without arousing suspicion. The fact that Carl had insisted they continue this vacation and stay in Rocky Point made Simon curious. What if Carl had abducted Ella from her house in Blue Mountain? What if the accident had been just that—an accident? Had Carl pushed for her release from the hospital so they could make it to Rocky Point for some unknown reason? Or what if they were in something together but Ella couldn’t remember they were partners? Would that explain her changed appearance?

It all came down to her houselights blazing, the abandoned snow globe in the garage and his gut feeling.

No answers right now, maybe tomorrow. He’d watch them come out to the car in the morning. See if Ella, once out of the hotel, appeared to be in distress. If she did, he would call in the cops.

“Be careful,” Ginny had said.

To hell with that. Carl Baxter was the one who better be careful.

Using his pocket flashlight, he opened the paperback he’d bought in the hotel gift shop and prepared for a long night.

“LET’S STOP HERE for breakfast,” Carl said as he pulled into the deep unpaved parking lot belonging to a restaurant perched high above the ocean. A fog bank hovered out at sea, though the day had dawned clear but breezy. The few trees managing to cling to the bluff were shaped by the predominant winds.

“I’ll stay here, you go eat,” Eleanor said. “My stomach feels terrible. It must be that pill I take at night, the one for my head. I wake up every morning with a stomachache.”

“Then skip the pill tonight,” he said, reaching over to unbuckle her seat belt.

“Carl, I can’t eat.”

He looked at his watch, then at her. There was something different about him today, a tightening around his mouth and eyes. “How selfish can you get?” he snarled. “Do you think just because you can’t eat, I should starve?”

Startled, she drew away from him. “You could have ordered from room service.”

“I’m tired of room service. Come on, get out of the car, keep me company. We’ll get you some toast.”

She got out of the car, unsure why she allowed him to bully her. Was this what she was always like, or was this apathy because of her injuries? She hoped and prayed it was the latter, because the woman she was right now was a tiresome bore who had come to life only once since awakening and that was when she spoke with a stranger about his lost love.

How pathetic was that?

A bell tinkled as they opened the door. The restaurant was bigger inside than it had looked from the outside. Tables ringed the perimeter, which was fronted with glass and a panoramic view of the sea beyond.

Waitresses scurried with giant platters perched on their shoulders; others poured endless cups of coffee. A hostess led them to a table near the windows. Eleanor took a chair facing the door as the waitress handed them menus. “Coffee?” she asked.

“Just one cup,” Carl said. “The lady wants tea.”

As the waitress hurried off, Carl scooted his chair clear around the table so that he was facing the door, too. He said, “Now, aren’t you glad you came inside?”

She looked at the menu while taking shallow breaths. The place smelled like greasy seafood. Refusing to lie about her supposed joy at being talked into coming inside, she folded the menu. Carl looked up at the door, visibly tensing every time the bell announced a newcomer.

“Are you expecting someone?” she asked.

“Expecting? No. Why do you ask?”

“You keep staring at the door.”

“So what?” he said.

His attitude toward her had taken a marked change from the preceding days. No longer overly solicitous, he was directing his general impatience at her. Truth was, she almost preferred it.

The waitress arrived with two coffees. As Eleanor had no plans to drink tea or anything else, she didn’t comment on the mistake. Carl didn’t seem to notice. “Crab omelet is our special today,” the waitress chirped.

“That’s fine,” Carl said absently, twisting a little as a bell announced a family scurrying in out of the wind.

“Nothing for me,” Eleanor said.

“Bring her unbuttered toast,” Carl said.

The family was seated a table or two away while a man in a green baseball cap with his nose buried in a blue-and-white handkerchief took a seat at a table behind her. Carl finally noticed her beverage. “They brought you coffee? Why didn’t you say something? Where is that stupid waitress?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she assured him. His nerves were beginning to get to her, too. Trying to soothe him, she looked around and added, “This is a nice restaurant. Maybe we could come back tonight and have dinner here.”

“I suspect we’ll be long gone before that,” he said absently, tensing as the bell rang over the door again.

A different waitress appeared with a tray holding a tall stack of pancakes and a pitcher of syrup. As she started to lower the tray, Carl put up a hand. “I didn’t order pancakes,” he barked. “You’ve got the wrong table.”

The tray tilted precariously as the waitress attempted to check the ticket buried in her apron pocket. Carl yelled at her, and she jerked. With a clatter, the plate slid right off the platter and landed in Carl’s lap. The pitcher of syrup followed.

Carl stood abruptly, his face as red as a boiled Dungeness crab.

The waitress immediately began apologizing and dabbing at Carl with a napkin.

“You clumsy oaf,” Carl sputtered, pushing her away.

“Sir, breakfast will be on us, of course.”

“It’s already on me!” he said, lifting his sticky hands. “Damn, I’ve got to go to the restroom and try to fix this.” His gaze went from his watch to the door to Eleanor. “Stay here. I’ll be back in two minutes.” He stomped off without waiting for a reply.

SIMON, NURSING A CUP of coffee and hiding behind a menu, watched the incident at Ella’s table with interest. He was willing to bet a week’s pay the waitress purposely dumped the food on Carl Baxter.