The Baby Chase. Jennifer Greene
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fence—”
“I don’t want to hear any more about your breaking-and-entering debacle.” God, she was going to give him gray hair. Until meeting her, he’d considered himself a relatively young thirty-eight. There’d been nothing to turn his hair white but death, destruction, and a few terrorists from his Special Forces days. “Wherever your car is, it sounds too far to walk. Mine’s parked out front, so I’ll just drive you there. Now where’d you leave your wet sweatshirt?”
“In the kitchen.” She glanced down at the black V-neck sweater, and abruptly clutched the neck closed. Heaven knew why. He’d seen her bra, seen her cleavage, seen every inch of her long white throat more than once tonight. Geronimo persisted in responding to her, no matter what repression techniques Gabe tried.
“I’d better put my sweatshirt back on, but where should I put the sweater back?”
“Just keep the sweater. I can’t imagine anyone would know or care if you borrowed it. I’ll get it from you and return it sometime, but putting on a wet sweatshirt on a cold night doesn’t make any sense. Just grab it—and that packsack you carried in with you—so we can go.”
“I think I may have left a light on upstairs. And I have some stuff to clean up in the closet. And I’d better wash out that shot glass—”
There was a reason Gabe always worked alone. His employees were good at teamwork, and often enough his staff paired up for different projects. Not him. He just didn’t like depending on other people. He liked being able to move fast and streamlined.
By the time Rebecca was “done” with all her messing around, he could have finished a slowpoke sucker.
He ushered her outside, turned to lock up the front door, and motioned her toward the long, low antique Morgan.
She wolf-whistled. Almost as good as a man. “What a darling,” she murmured.
“Yeah, she is. ’55. But she was cosseted as a showpiece for most of those years, so she doesn’t have that many miles on her.”
“You can still get parts?”
“Not easily. Parts are not only hard to find, they cost an arm and a leg. Damn few antique dealers even know this breed of car anymore.”
“But you don’t care, do you? She’s worth all the trouble.”
“Yeah.” He hadn’t expected Rebecca to understand. He opened the passenger door and watched her long, slim legs disappear under the long, slim console. The aggravating thought crossed his mind that she was made for the car.
Lack of sleep was obviously the reason he wasn’t thinking clearly. He closed her in, locked her door and hiked around to the other side. The engine purred as soon as he turned the key.
“What a beautiful baby,” she murmured.
Her comment about babies inevitably reminded him of the comment she’d made earlier about sperm banks. He told himself to keep quiet, that it was none of his business…but the comment had nagged at the back of his mind all night.
For a few minutes, he stayed silent. The storm had died, but a fine silver mist was still drizzling down. Grass and trees glistened in the ghostly night as he tooled down the driveway, stopping to unlock the gate with a set of keys. No one seemed to be awake or alive for miles. There were no lights, and no sounds but the rustling trees and the whisper of that diamond-studded mist.
Locating her car was easy; there were no other vehicles on the road. He pulled up behind the cherry red Ciera and glanced at her. She’d raved pretty enthusiastically about his car, and coming from the Fortune family, she could probably have owned a fleet of Morgans if she chose. Instead, she’d picked solid, reliable wheels. A wholesome four-door, yet. A capital F family car—for a lady who made no secret of her desire and love for family—and somehow he just couldn’t let it go.
“You aren’t serious about looking into sperm banks.”
“Sure I am.” While the engine idled, she ducked her head to gather up her things.
“The last I knew, a husband was sort of the usual way to get a baby. Or at least some guy in the direct picture.”
“Usually,” she agreed wryly. “Believe me, I haven’t quit looking. But being a Fortune has a few disadvantages—a lot of guys were more interested in courting the family money than me. And sitting home writing books doesn’t make for meeting a lot of new men, either. It just isn’t that easy to find a white knight—or it hasn’t been for me—and I’ve got a biological clock ticking loud and strong.”
“I’ll bet you have been prey to a lot of fortune hunters…but you’re hardly ancient.”
“Old enough. Thirty-three is a good, healthy age to have a child. And, thankfully, this is the nineties. No one’s going to look sideways if I choose to be a single mom. This is an ideal time for me to have a baby—I’m ready, I’m healthy, I’m financially prepared to be a parent, and I’m dying for a baby. Or six.”
Six? Gabe swallowed hard. “You don’t think sperm banks are a little…drastic?”
“I think marrying the wrong man just because I’m hungry for a family would be ‘drastic.’ I’m sold on true love, cutie, and have absolutely no interest in settling for less. But I also want a family. Children to love and care for. For sure it’d be better if there was a loving dad in the picture, but if that’s not in the cards, there’s no reason I can’t deal from another deck.”
“Have you talked this out with your mama?”
“Kate?” Rebecca’s grin was amused. “You think my mom would talk me out of this?”
Damn straight he did. Sperm banks, for God’s sake!
“Well, I hate to disillusion you, darlin’, but my mom would back me up all the way. She always has. From the day I was born, Kate encouraged me to take my own roads. I know on the surface no one sees us as alike—she’s a hardheaded, practical businesswoman, a high-profile achiever. No accident that she’s the head of a financial empire. I’m not like that, Gabe, never will be. But she pushed me toward writing, pushed me toward living my life on my own terms, my own way, and taught me never to back down from what I wanted and believed in. Believe me, my mom wouldn’t give me any argument over this.”
Somehow Gabe thought otherwise. Somehow he was damn sure Kate would like her youngest married off, preferably to a guy who could keep her impulsive baby safe and under control. Sperm banks didn’t fit in that scenario, no way and nohow.
Rebecca’s gaze roamed his face. Something in the way she probingly studied him aroused an uneasy feeling. “You don’t have a male biological clock ticking of your own? No desire to have a son, a daughter, family to come home to at night? A new generation of Devereax?”
“The past generation of Devereax wasn’t anything worth repeating,” he said shortly. “I don’t have your idealistic view about families. They only read great in storybooks.”
“That’s an awfully cynical view, cutie.”
“Realistic,” he corrected her, and abruptly leaned across her chest to open her car door. The whole personal nature of this conversation was crazy. It was past time to cut it off. “You go home, soak out those aches and bruises, get some sleep. Don’t even think about that letter—I’ll follow through with it. Stay out of it from now on, Rebecca.”
“I’ll be darned. Did you suddenly get elected my boss?”
Four in the morning, and she still had the energy to dish out grief. “Look, you came up with a lead. You did really good. You did more toward helping your brother than a whole team of people have done so far. But that letter also changes things, because it potentially—potentially—puts another suspect in the picture.”
“So?”
“So, if there is another potential suspect, that person is also a potential murderer.