Westin Family Ties. Alice Sharpe
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Take the blue one off the loop and give yourself a tour, okay? It’s the back unit I’m renting. You get a real nice view of the alley. I rented the front one to a little gal yesterday. You’re welcome to look at the place, only don’t bother my new tenant. When you’re done, slip the key in the mail slot here by my door. If you’re interested, my number is on the sign, call me this afternoon. No, wait, today it’s my turn to work at the library until closing time. Better call me tomorrow or drop by the library if you want. Ask for Stew. I’m running late.”
This was all said as Cody worked the blue key free. “Thanks,” he said, handing back the other keys.
“No problem.” The man hit the electronic button on his ring and the garage door rolled up. The garage itself looked huge, split into two sections. One side was laid out as a woodworking shop with a lot of nice equipment, a long workbench along the outside wall, and a heater for the cold winter months. The other side sheltered a vehicle. The man threw the books into the backseat of a vintage 1957 Chevy and took off, the garage door rolling closed after him.
Cody had no intention of touring the back apartment. He found the mail slot and slipped the key through the opening where it clinked as it landed inside the house.
He’d intended to show the homeowner Cassie’s photo, but it had all happened too fast; the fact that a lone woman had rented the place the day before fit. There was only one way to make sure, of course, so taking a deep breath, he steeled himself for another heaping dose of disappointment and walked toward the garage.
The stairs were pretty steep and ran against the side of the garage up to a landing. At the top of the stairs, you could either stop at the door of the front unit, or keep moving away from the street toward the unit in the back.
There was no peephole in the door, which meant whoever lived here had no way of knowing who was knocking. He rapped a few times and all but stopped breathing.
And as he waited he thought of the accusations Emerson Banner had leveled at Cassie. Lying, manipulating, stealing, murder. It was absolutely impossible to imagine Cassie doing any of that.
So, if the woman he hoped was his wife was actually someone else, was he about to come face to face with a murderer? And if it was Cassie? Had she changed so much she was capable of these terrible things?
His heart jammed in his throat as he heard footsteps sound inside. “Who is it?” a woman’s voice called. Impossible to tell whose voice, but the underlying tension rang out clear.
He mumbled, “Landlord,” and in that moment a jolt of doubt hit him so hard it was all he could do not to reach out and grab something for support.
What was he doing here? Why had he pursued her? She’d obviously left him behind, and yet he’d moved a piece of heaven and a whole lot of earth to find her while all the while she’d known exactly where he was. She could have come home if that was what she’d wanted.
Or could she have? Had he slammed the door that firmly in her face?
The door opened, catching on a chain after two inches, and he didn’t know who he hoped would peer out and see him. A stranger or his wife or maybe a murderer. Or maybe a woman who had managed to become all three?
The chain slid away and the door opened wider.
For one interminable moment, he stared into Cassie’s startled sky-blue eyes and couldn’t have felt more winded if a runaway horse had tossed him to the ground and landed on top of him. All these months he’d anticipated this moment.
But in the end, nothing had prepared him for the almost physical punch in his heart that came with the first glimpse of her face. The creamy skin, the gently arched brows, the too-wide mouth and slightly long nose, attributes that saved her from cuteness and transported her to true beauty.
And then his gaze dipped lower and everything changed forever.
The simple gold band he’d given her three years before still circled her ring finger.
What was new was the bulging belly beneath where her hand rested. She was pregnant.
And not just a little bit.
Chapter Three
“Cody,” Cassie said softly.
Her heart had been beating fast when she heard the knock: for the past twenty-four hours, she’d been expecting the police.
Instead, Cody.
There wasn’t a thing about him she didn’t know by heart. Not the way one eyebrow tended to lift when he spoke, not the exact shape of his lips or the dark brown of his eyes.
And not the shock that flashed in those eyes as he took in her changed appearance and began processing what it meant.
This was the moment she had tried so hard to avoid, the moment she’d had nightmares about. The moment when he saw her condition and undoubtedly leapt to one conclusion.
She cleared her throat. “How did you find me?”
“I saw you across the street from the Priestly house,” he said after a moment. “I…I followed you.”
She looked behind him toward the street. “Did anyone else see me?”
“I don’t think so. You didn’t call Emma Kruger when you said you would. She got worried.” His gaze once again dipped to Cassie’s protruding belly and the silence between them stretched tight. “Cassie? Can I come in?”
Cassie. Not Laura, not anymore. “Yes, of course,” she said. As she stepped aside, she once again scanned the empty street before hastily closing the door and turning back into the room. And then her gaze met Cody’s again.
She’d wondered, of course. How would she feel when she saw him again? Would the magic between them be gone, a victim of their fight? She folded her fingers into her palm as she steeled herself for what came next.
But why, why hadn’t she dressed nicer that morning? Why hadn’t she washed her hair or stuck on some lipstick? For something to do, she took the blue scarf from around her neck and looped it through the strap on her oversized hobo bag, her fingers trembling.
He finally cleared his throat. “When is the baby due?”
“A little over a month.”
His voice grew hesitant. “Is it…mine?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know about it when you left?”
“You mean did I know I was pregnant when I told you it was time we start our family? No, I didn’t know.”
He swore softly, took off his hat and looked around the apartment. She knew what he saw. The place was a furnished dump, there were no two ways about it, but she’d arrived the day before in a panic and all she’d wanted was a refuge, no questions asked, four walls and a locked door.
“I don’t even know where to start,” he said, turning his steady gaze on her again.
How many times over the past few months had she scanned the faces of strangers, looking for him, wondering if he’d followed her, half-hoping he hadn’t, half-hoping he had? No one else looked like Cody Westin, though, not even his brothers, Adam and Pierce. There were family resemblances, to be sure, but Cody was the one a woman’s eyes strayed to. The perfectly balanced strong body, wide shoulders and clear-cut features all added up to a great-looking package, but it was something else, too, some sense of reserve and privacy about him that made a lot of women, women like her, melt inside.
Face it; he was so masculine it confused her. In fact at times during their marriage they had seemed like foreigners thrown together on the stagecoach of life, seeing each other, touching, but not speaking the same language.
“Do you know the police are looking for you?” Cody asked.
Her heartbeat doubled as her hands clenched at her sides. “I wasn’t sure. I guess it doesn’t