Their Child?: Lori's Little Secret / Which Child Is Mine? / Having The Best Man's Baby

Nothing. Until later.

When she would do it. Absolutely. No backing out.

Just as she was getting used to the idea that she was off the hook for a little bit longer, they reached the ballroom.

And Tucker kept going.

He pulled her along near the back wall as the guests gathered around the stage where a green-skirted table now stood crowned with Lena’s enormous five-tiered, buttercream rose-bedecked cake. Lena and Dirk and Heck were all up there and Heck was shouting about love and forever and what a lucky man Dirk was as the wedding photographer snapped away.

Tucker kept going, toward the double doors on the side wall that led out to the veranda. Which was crazy. They couldn’t go out there. Beyond the windows, lightning flashed and thunder boomed and rolled away in a crashing rumble.

Lori dug in her heels. “Tucker, it’s wild out there.”

He hardly glanced back at her. “It’s under cover. The worst that can happen is the wind will mess up your hair…”

“Oh, Tucker…” Her heart raced and her cheeks burned and she let him continue to pull her along. Excitement and fear and anticipation swirled around inside her, a storm within to match the one outside beyond the veranda.

All at once, everything seemed to have gone crazy and wild—wild as the wind she could hear crying beyond the clubhouse walls. One of the wait staff had gone up on the stage to whisper in her father’s ear. She heard Heck say, “Folks. Folks. I need everyone’s attention. We have a little situa—”

She didn’t hear the rest. Tucker had pushed on the bar that opened the door and they were slipping through it. The door shut itself instantly, almost catching her long skirt, which she managed to tug to safety at the last possible second.

A hard gust of wind blew down the long, deep porch, lifting her skirt and then plastering it hard against her legs. Her formerly sleek hairdo pulled loose of its pins and blew in her eyes and across her mouth.

Out past the porch roof, the rain pounded, huge drops mixed with hail. The sky in the distance lay in heavy layers of gunmetal gray. Lightning slithered down out of the clouds, slicing the grayness with its hot-white gleam. Thunder roared.

Staff members had already been out there to take in the chair and sofa cushions. The bare wicker furniture skittered around in a jerky dance, dragging against the porch boards.

Lori swiped a few strands of hair from her mouth. “Tucker, I don’t know if we—”

“This way.” He led her over, out of sight of the windows, into the corner where the wall of the foyer jutted out toward the wide entrance steps. He pulled her around and backed her up against the wall so she was sheltered from the wind. Then he braced a hand on the wall to either side of her, boxing her in. “Better?”

“I…” Words deserted her. She looked up at him and she knew he was going to kiss her and she also knew that she wasn’t going to stop him. Still, she made a piddling little effort at it. “I think we should—”

“Shh,” he whispered, as beyond the shield of his big, warm body, lightning flared in a chain of bright explosions, followed by bursts of thunder, booming, then rolling away, then booming some more. Hail drummed on the roof over their heads.

Tucker ignored the fury of the storm. He nuzzled her temple, whispered, “Lori. I swear. I was going to go slow, you know? But I don’t want to go slow. I want to kiss you. Please. Say it’s all right.”

All right?

It was more than all right—except for the fact that she should tell him about Brody first, before they did any kissing. She should tell him about Brody, and then, if he still wanted to kiss her, they could take it from there.

But there was a problem.

She was doing that falling thing. She was dropping, drowning, melting into those velvet-brown eyes of his. The wild storm beyond the veranda, the three hundred wedding guests on the other side of the wall…

Everything—all of it—receded. The world went quiet and still. They’d entered the center of their own private storm. There was only Tucker. Tucker, who wanted to kiss her. And Lori, who only longed to kiss him right back.

She lifted her face, anticipation shivering through her like ripples on a glassy pond.

“Say yes,” he whispered. Yes. A truly beautiful word—and, all at once, the only word she knew. “Yes,” he prompted again.

So she said it. “Yes…”

And his lips descended.

Beyond the veranda, the rain came down in punishing sheets, the hail pounded and the lightning flared, answering claps of thunder booming out a moment afterward.

Tucker covered Lori’s sweet mouth with his own—and it happened again. The driving beat of the rain, the bright bursts of lightning, the crash and roll of the thunder—all that, everything that made up the real world—faded away.

It was that night again. Eleven years ago. It was that night…

And this woman.

Amazing. Incredible. The warm, thrilling fit of her mouth under his…the very taste and scent of her: the same. Exactly the same. He thought, Lori. It was Lori, that night…

He thought it, and then he let it go.

It didn’t matter, what crazy tricks his mind and his senses insisted on playing on him. This was what mattered.

This woman. This moment.

This perfect kiss…

He deepened the kiss, pressing himself against her, clasping her arms to pull her away from the wall enough that he could slip his hands around her and gather her close.

She shuddered and sighed and raised her slim arms to clasp his neck. He went on kissing her, tucking her into him, feeling the singing, smooth length of her all along his body, breathing her scent, hearing the rustle of that pink silk dress like a whispered promise of pleasure to come as she kissed him more deeply and pressed ever closer.

This… yes! This was all he wanted. This woman, this moment, with his arms around her…

It just didn’t get any better than this. He wanted to go on kissing her forever.

But then she took her hands from around his neck and lowered them to his shoulders. Lightning flared and thunder exploded and he felt the gentle, insistent pressure as she pushed at his chest.

And he knew she was right. It was neither the time nor the place to get too carried away. He lifted his head and looked down at her flushed cheeks and tempting, kiss—swollen lips and again he had that weird, déjà vu feeling he’d been having since he saw her at the table with Brody. He gave her a smile and whispered her name. “Lori…”

“Oh, Tucker,” she murmured, looking sweet and bewildered and adorably unsure. “If only…”

A hard gust of wind brought a spray of rain and hail slanting onto the veranda. It spattered the boards at their feet and stained the hem of her dress a darker pink.

He swore at his own idiocy and grabbed her hand. “I was nuts to bring you out in this. We should get the hell inside.” He started to turn.

But she held on, tugged him back. “No. Listen, I—”

“Tucker!” It was Tate’s voice, from behind him. Tucker cast a glance over his shoulder. His brother was braced in the half-open door to the ballroom. “Damn it to Hell. There you are!” His usually tanned face had a grayish cast.

Tucker turned. “What’s up?”

“We got a call. We’re under a tornado warning. Clouds boiling up to the south, behind the clubhouse. Things don’t look good. It’s time to head for the cellar.”

Chapter Seven

“Listen.” Lori motioned for silence and huddled closer to Tucker. “Do you hear it?”

Tucker did—in the distance to the north, beyond the wind-tossed oaks that lined the wide front driveway. The storm siren in town had gone off.

Lori’s face went dead white. “Oh, God. Brody…”

“Settle down,” Tate advised. “So far, it’s just a warning. But we’d better not fool around with it. Come on, let’s go.” Tate held the door for them and they ducked inside, where the ballroom was empty except for the tight line of silent, frightened-looking people snaking out from the braced-open double doors to the kitchen.

The club’s manager hovered at the back of the line, herding everyone forward. At the opposite end of the room, up on the stage, Lena’s wedding cake waited, alone in a spotlight, surrounded by band equipment.

Lori demanded, “Tate. Please. Brody—have you seen him?”

Tate had already rushed past them. He sent her a bleak look back over his shoulder, but he didn’t break stride. “Sorry. I haven’t. But we tried to send the kids down first. Come on. Get in the line.”

“We have to find Brody,” Lori insisted. “Brody!” she called, pulling her hand free of Tucker’s, racing for the stage, as if the boy might be hiding up there, behind that big cake. When no answer came, she paused, pink skirts swaying and put her hands to her face. “Oh, God. Oh, God…”

Tucker caught up with her. “Lori.” He took her by the shoulders, turned her to face him.

“No. No…” She shoved at his chest. “Let me go.”

He held on. “Steady. Don’t panic. Tate said he’s probably safe in the basement.” She stared at him, terrified, her slim body shaking. He grabbed her hand again. “Come on. We’ll find out where he is.”

She let him lead her. They edged through the door to the kitchen. He apologized as they went, reassuring the worried guests who’d been waiting their turn in line that they weren’t trying to cut ahead.

Beyond the doors, amid the steel counters and industrial-sized appliances, Molly, Dirk and Heck had taken charge of the crowd.

“That’s right, folks,” said Molly, at the head of the line, near the inside wall where a door opened onto cellar steps. “Keep it calm and keep it moving.”

“Easy,” Dirk added. “There’s room for everyone.”

“Two at a time, now,” Heck instructed. “No need to push.”

One of the guests cried, “But there’re hundreds of us!”

Another demanded, “Yeah. How can you say there’ll be room?”

“No problem.” Tate, who’d taken a station between Dirk and Molly, spoke up. “I’ve been down there. The cellar’s as big as the ballroom. Lots of storage, several rooms. Plenty of space. Room for everyone…”

It looked to Tucker as if they had maybe two-thirds of the guests below ground already. The line was moving amazingly fast—because the club’s manager, and Molly, Heck, Dirk and now Tate, as well, were keeping everyone calm and moving forward.

Lori pulled her hand free of Tucker’s grip and rushed to her father. “Daddy, did Brody already go down there?”

Heck frowned. “I thought he was with you…”

“Mama? Lena?”

Heck looked ahead, to the front of the line. “They’ve gone on downstairs.”

Lori spun on her heel and dashed over to Molly. “Did you see Brody go down there?”

Molly continued to wave the line of guests forward as she shook her head. “No. I don’t think I’ve seen him. I could have missed him, but I’ve been watching for the kids I know…”

Right then, the lights flickered and went out. A collective gasp rose up from the people in the ever-shortening line. Shadows engulfed them, though gray light still bled through from the open doors to the ballroom.

Someone let out a low, terrified whimper. “It’s happening. It’s coming…”

Tate said, “It’s okay, folks. There’s enough light to see by. Just keep moving, nice and steady…” The line had cleared the door to the ballroom. In no time at all, they’d have everyone down the stairs.

“Oh, God…” Lori whirled for the other set of double doors, the ones that led out to the dining room.

Heck called, “Lori—girl. Wait. You’ve got to get—”

She didn’t break stride. “I’ve got to find Brody…”

Heck started to follow her. “Lori!”

Tucker slid in front of him. “Watch the line. They need you. I’ll look after her.”

“My grandson. Dear God. We have to—”

“Don’t worry. We’ll find him.” He said it with a lot more certainty than he felt. Damn. Who could say where the boy was now? He could already be safe underground.

But there was no stopping Lori. She was moving and moving fast. Tucker rushed to catch up with her, not waiting to hear Heck’s reply.

She raced around a jut of steel counter, headed for the dining room doors. When she got there, she yanked a door open just wide enough to slide through. Tucker caught it and followed, into the deserted dining room with its now-bare tables and stacks of crated dishes.

“Brody!” Lori cried. “Brody, where are you?”

“Lori. Wait.”

She ignored him. Pink skirts lifted high, she zipped under the arch that led to the foyer. “Brody! Brody!”

Impossibly, that time, there was an answer. “Mom!” The kid came running from the shadowed hallway that led to the Cottonwood Room. “What’s going on? It’s dark! We were playing hide-and-seek. I was it. I found this sweet hiding place and I waited and waited and—”

Lori was all at once calmness personified. She put up a hand. “Brody. We’ve got to move, now. Come on, come on.” She reached out, wiggling her fingers. The boy ran to her and took her hand.

Outside, there was the strangest sound. Like a train racing toward them, bearing down.

Brody’s eyes went wide as dinner plates. “What’s that?”

“This way.” Tucker grabbed Lori’s free hand. He ran, pulling Lori who pulled Brody, past the main desk at the back wall of the reception area, down a short hall to another door, a single one, that led into the kitchen. He shoved that door open and held it, ushering Lori and Brody in ahead of him.

The sound was louder than any train by then. It roared around them, engulfing them. Glass shattered, walls of it, a series of sharp explosions, seeming to come from everywhere at once—the windows busting inward—in the dining room, the ballroom, all over the clubhouse.

The roaring, impossibly, grew even louder.

Tate stood alone at the open door to the cellar, urging them forward. “Come on, hurry up!”

And the twister was on them.

The shut doors to the dining room flew outward and blew off their hinges into the other room. Simultaneously, the doors to the ballroom banged shut and then open—twice. Then they too ripped away and blew off.

Fury engulfed them. Pots and pans and any number of sharp objects rose and went flying. Tucker herded Lori and Brody ahead of him, fighting every inch of the way, as the whole world broke loose from its moorings and the roaring became a monster that swallowed them alive.

It was all so slow after that. A minute—two, maybe—stretched into an eternity of terror, of sudden hard blows and noise.

The wild monster of roaring wind lifted Brody straight up off the floor—and threw him directly at Tate. Tate, miraculously, caught him.

“Go!” Lori shouted. “Go down, now!”

Tate turned and descended, as Brody cried, “Mama!” his young hands reaching, grasping, over Tate’s broad shoulder, as if he could pull Lori to safety with him by sheer effort of his ten-year-old will.

Tucker had Lori hard by the waist. He pushed her forward. Things kept hitting him—a knife handle, a wooden bowl; a dish shattered against his shoulder. It didn’t hurt. None of it hurt. He felt each blow as if it had been delivered with intent. The wild monster fought him. He fought back. The monster wouldn’t—couldn’t—win.

The door to the cellar came off its hinges, lifted, flattened above their heads, spun like a plate, and flew out the hole where the ballroom doors had been.

Lori screamed.

He urged her onward. “Go, move, we can make it.”

She surged valiantly forward, her dress plastered hard to her legs, slowing her progress—until she grabbed it and hiked it up around her waist. The dress flapped back, wrapping around him, holding on tight like a clutching, desperate living thing.

From overhead, above the ceiling, on the second floor, there was an earsplitting ripping sound. One part of Tucker’s mind placed the noise: the roof must have blown off.

Tucker kept his focus, kept pushing Lori from behind, every inch toward that cellar door a triumph, a victory over the monster that roared and clattered and beat at them and threatened to tear them apart.

They made it to the door and she was just about to duck into the stairwell, when the walls started going. Within the roaring rose a groaning and a horrible, screaming, creaking sound.

Tucker staggered on the shifting floor.

Lori cried his name, “Tucker!” and turned, reaching back to grab for him. Before he could tell her to go on, to go forward, to get down the damn stairs, a white stoneware mixing bowl materialized out of the spinning chaos, flying straight at her. It struck her at the temple, breaking neatly in half, the pieces pausing in midair and then blowing off in opposite directions. Blood bloomed at her forehead, welled, spattered everywhere.

The walls were falling in on them. Platters and frying pans whizzed by them—and Lori wore the strangest, most tender, sad look.

“Sorry…” She formed the word, without sound, as the blood ran into her mouth, sprayed her pink dress and the front of his suit. “So sorry. Ruined everything…” Her eyes drooped shut beneath the curtain of blood. She fell toward him and he caught her.

Her limp body anchored him.

He was able to take that one more step, to gather her to him, lift her high against his chest, and surge for the stairs. He went down as the ceiling gave way and came crashing to the floor.

Chapter Eight

In the shadowed candle and lantern-lit recesses beneath the clubhouse, a deep hush descended.

From above, there was silence. Terrible. Total.

The monster had moved on.

Tucker sat on the bench that a few kind souls had vacated for him when he came down the stairs with Lori limp in his arms.

She lay stretched out beside him, too pale and very still. Her bright head, matted with blood, rested in his lap. Someone had handed him a clean white bar towel. He pressed it to the wound on her temple, watching it slowly soak crimson, the dark stain spreading, absorbing the white.

He told himself the flow was slowing. But he really wasn’t sure that was true.

Brody stood beside the bench holding Lori’s limp hand. His young face was set, his mouth a bleak line. Lori’s mother and father and Lena, Dirk at her side, hovered a few feet away, all of them silent as the quiet from above.

Someone nearby spoke into the hush. “It’s over…”

And then, from aboveground, came a slow, painful creaking sound. Something fell with a shuddering crash.

“Oh, sweet Lord,” a woman cried.

“What was that?” a man demanded.

No one answered him. Who the hell could say?

Tate pulled a cell phone from his inside jacket pocket. He flipped it open and gave it a try. “No go,” he said. “That big boy must have knocked out a tower or two.” Tate turned to the club manager. “You got a land line down here?”

Near the wall, where water had begun to trickle down from broken pipes above, one of the bridesmaids spoke up. “There’s one right here.” She took the receiver off the hook and put it to her ear. Then she shook her head. “Dead.”

All around them, people were trying their cells—and getting nothing.

Tate said, “Okay. Let’s check out our chances of digging out of here.”

He chose a couple of able-bodied men to go with him up the stairs. The club’s manager and two of the wait staff went the opposite direction, headed for the outside entrance, an in-ground steel door, mounted in concrete, reached by an underground corridor that ran out about ten yards from the clubhouse.

Tucker left them to it. Right then, all he cared about was the unmoving, blood-spattered woman in his arms. No way would he leave her side. He stared down at her still face and a word burst like a bright light into his stunned mind: doctor.

Damn. What was wrong with him? A doctor should have been the first thing he asked for once they made it down those stairs. He glanced up. “Doc Flannigan. Where’s Doc Flannigan?”

Lori’s dad, shell-shocked as the rest of them, visibly shook himself. “The doc. Why the hell didn’t I think of that?” Heck raised his voice to his best booming roar. “Doc! We need Doc Flannigan over here, now!”

The word went out through the cellar’s warren of rooms.

“Doc Flannigan.”

“Anybody seen Dr. Flannigan?”

“Doc Flannigan. They need him up front.”

A couple of minutes later, the tall, white-haired gent eased his way through the crowd. When he reached the bench, his silver brows drew together. “Oh, my.” He handed his jacket to Brody. “I wonder, could you hold on to this for me, young man—and move back over there just a little?”

With obvious reluctance, Brody laid his mother’s hand gently on her stomach, took the jacket and stepped back. Tucker watched him, thinking what a terrific kid he was. Ten years old and holding it together with a building collapsed on top of them and his mother out cold and covered in blood.

“Thank you.” The doctor sent the boy an encouraging smile as he rolled up his sleeves. He turned to Tucker. “Is she breathing normally?”

“Yeah, as far as I can see.”

The doc said, patiently, “Son, with her head in your lap like that, there is some restriction of the airways…”

Calling himself ten kinds of thoughtless idiot, Tucker carefully eased out from under her, guiding her head to the bench with a cautious hand, keeping steady, gentle pressure on the wound the whole time.

The doctor moved closer. “Any other injuries—beyond this nasty head wound?”

Tucker said, “I don’t think so. But stuff was flying all over up there. She might have a bruise or a cut or two.”

“Nothing major, though—other than that gash on her head?”

Tucker frowned. “It was wild up there. I can’t say for sure…”

“Let’s have a look, why don’t we?” The doctor glanced over his shoulder. “Bring that lantern close. Someone get me some clean towels, please. And something to cover her.”

The man with the lantern stepped up and held it high. Two women moved off—presumably in search of the towels and a blanket.

Dr. Flannigan examined the angry, swelling gash. Yes, Tucker thought with a grim surge of triumph, the flow of blood really had slowed. Flannigan gently poked and prodded. He checked Lori’s pulse and lifted her eyelids, one and then the other.

About then, Tate and the men returned from the stairs.

“That exit’s blocked solid,” Tate said, scowling. “We’ll have a hell of a time digging out that way…”

Molly, who’d been hanging back near the wall, stepped close to her husband and slid her hand in his. Tucker guessed, from the look on her face, that she was thinking of their babies, hoping they were safe with the nanny in the basement at the Double T. Tate lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss on the fingers twined so tightly with his.

The two women returned with a stack of bar towels, what looked like neatly folded tablecloths—and a bowl of water.

“Water,” said the doc. “Wonderful.”

One of the women spoke up. “There’s a laundry room, down the hall. The sink faucet in there is still working.”

“Excellent.” Flannigan wet a towel. “Let’s see if we can get a better look here…” He dabbed at the bloody mess over Lori’s eye.

About then, the club manager elbowed his way toward them from the other direction.

Tate said, “Well?”

The manager actually dared a smile. “The outside exit is clear. We can get out, no problem. Plus, there are choppers overhead and we heard sirens. Help is definitely on the way.”

The E.M.T.s came down the corridor from the outside exit to get Lori. They loaded her onto a stretcher, carried her out and put her in the ambulance. They were headed for Tate Memorial, the hospital that Ol’ Tuck had generously endowed. Memorial was big enough to have state-of-the-art machinery, its own E.R. and a surgeon with a solid handle on head trauma.