Trust Me (Last Stand #1)(68)
Author: Brenda Novak

“Thanks a lot,” he muttered as he sat at his kitchen table, glaring down at it.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Jeremy asked, yawning as he came into the room in his pajamas.

David quickly folded the paper, put it aside and got up to rinse out his coffee cup. “Nothing, bud. How’d you sleep?”

“Good.”

“What do you say we go out for breakfast?”

“To Carolina’s Country Kitchen?” he cried.

“If that’s where you’d like to go.” It wasn’t David’s favorite restaurant, but Jeremy was fond of Carolina’s biscuits and gravy. And getting out of the apartment was better than sitting around, wanting to call Skye. He’d tried to reach her once, late, after he’d returned home. She hadn’t answered, but she’d been on his mind ever since. If he wasn’t remembering what took place in the bathroom, he was worrying about the results of acting like an overexcited teenage boy.

He sighed as he grabbed his car keys. With his luck, he’d gotten her pregnant….

18

Skye squinted at the bright sun pouring through her windows. Her first thought was that it was sunny and not foggy, as it had been for weeks. Somehow that seemed significant, uplifting, and indicative of a break from the gloom of the past few days. Her second thought was that she’d made love with David last night. That seemed significant, too, more significant than anything else, but also surreal. Particularly since they’d taken a risk she’d never taken with any other man.

Who would’ve supposed that after more than three years of restraint, she and David would succumb to their attraction so unexpectedly?

She put a hand to her stomach, wondering if she could be carrying his child. She expected pure panic at the possibility. He was so loyal to the son he already had, and to that son’s mother, she’d likely be a single parent. Definitely not what she’d hoped for her future. But she wouldn’t use any loyalty he might feel toward a new baby to win him over. Either he loved her and wanted her—or he didn’t. And if he didn’t, it wasn’t as if she was a young girl without options. She was nearly thirty years old, had a home and enough experience and skills to make a living. She also wanted a baby. She hadn’t allowed it to become a major issue, but she’d felt that way for a while.

But would she be able to do the kind of work she did now if she had a child?

Rubbing her eyes, she told herself it was premature to even try to answer that question and turned her thoughts in other directions as she hurried to get ready for work. It was Sunday morning, which she typically spent at home, cleaning, reading, surfing the Internet or catching up on paperwork for The Last Stand. But after the shooting, she didn’t want to be here at all. The delta house no longer symbolized the peace, comfort and safety of her childhood.

Don’t think about the shooting. Skye tried to concentrate on basic activities—such as having a shower, applying makeup and choosing clothes—but it was no use. She kept imagining the breathless excitement of David’s hands seeking the most intimate parts of her body—and worrying about the possibility of a baby.

There’s no baby. It almost always took more than one encounter. The possibility of conception was remote, anyway, since she was so late in her cycle.

She wouldn’t let herself dwell on the very slim chance that she was pregnant, she decided. But when she stopped at the grocery store on her way to the office to buy some apples, she found her gaze trailing after a mother carrying a baby. As she waited at a traffic light after leaving the grocery store, she caught herself staring wistfully at a little girl in the backseat of the car next to hers. And, for the first time in her life, Skye noticed the existence of a children’s furniture store on Howe Avenue that had obviously been around for years.

“What are you staring at?”

Skye roused herself from the trancelike state she’d fallen into during the past few minutes. Jasmine was at her office door. As far as Skye knew, she hadn’t shown up at the fund-raiser. But it was possible she’d come late, after Skye had left.

“Nothing, really,” she said. “Just taking a break. I’ve been on the phone all morning, calling our volunteers.”

“What have you found out?”

“Felicia Martinez said a man approached her, asking for my address. He told her he had a box to deliver to my house. He said it was a thank-you from someone I’d helped.”

“The volunteers don’t have your address, do they?”

“It wouldn’t be too hard to find around here. I could’ve used an old box with a shipping label to carry something in, or asked one of them to drop something off—” A sheepish expression came over Jasmine’s face, causing Skye to stop midsentence. “What?”

“Actually, now that you mention it, I think your address might be in my Rolodex.”

“See? There are ways.”

“So did Felicia give him that information?”

“She says not. But she didn’t tell me about the encounter before I asked, either. So that’s a concern.”

“She probably thought it was nothing.”

“That’s exactly what she thought.”

“Did the man have giant piercings in his earlobes? A goatee?”

“No. She described him, but it wasn’t anyone I recognized.”

“Someone handed over your address.”

“And I’m sure it was just as innocent. Information provided as a courtesy.”

But how did this man, whoever he was, know whom to approach? Was he watching the office?

Skye gazed down at the list she’d been using. She was so grateful to their volunteers; she couldn’t believe any of them would purposely betray her. They were a team, working for the same cause. They trusted each other.

And now Burke, or someone else, was using even them against her.

She set the list aside because she hated thinking about the possibilities. “When’d you get back from Ft. Bragg?”

“A few minutes ago.”

“You spent the night there?” If so, it didn’t look as if she’d gotten much sleep. Skye could see the smudges beneath Jasmine’s eyes despite her dark coloring.

“I had to. It was really late by the time I finished dealing with the police.”

“How’d that go?”

Her friend’s eyes moved to the photographs on Skye’s wall, then darted away. Obviously, the faces of those killers created too much of an emotional trigger for her right now. “The police have the right guy,” Jasmine said.