Knocked Up in Alaska, page 33
Shay smiled at her—same old smile—and shook his head. “You’re not asleep. Listen, Lilah, you know how you’ve been wanting to punch someone since you were in labor, and I told you you’d get your chance?”
“What?”
“Now’s your chance. Go in swinging, slugger.”
She scrubbed her hands over her face. “I don’t under…”—and looked up— “stand,” she said to the empty passenger seat.
Good Lord, Lilah, you’re losing your mind.
She blamed Ford for that. Since he’d basically called her too young, cowardly, and foolish to run her own life and backed away from her, she tossed and turned too many hours every night replaying their argument in her mind, except in her replays she said all the things she should have said at the time but couldn’t seem to get her tongue around.
Yeah, she won their argument every dang time in her re-dos, but those victories were brief, because when she did finally manage to fall asleep, she invariably dreamed of him, of his voice and his touch and his body doing things to hers that left her sweaty and aching when she woke. Sweaty and aching and lonely.
Waiting him out was the right thing to do. The only thing, really, because as lonely and miserable as it made her, she absolutely would not throw herself at him, offer him her heart, and let him reject it on the grounds that she didn’t know what she was doing. She might not have his respect, but at least she had self-respect. Self-respect she’d lose if she stooped to sexual torture or any other tactic that didn’t involve him admitting he was wrong.
Resigned to another restless night, she took her keys, hauled the everything bag to her shoulder, then came around and lifted the baby carrier from its base. Balanced, but not burdened, she walked up the drive to the dark porch. On an evening like this, she wished she hadn’t promised Ford she’d lock her door. She missed the ease of just walking in, rather than fumbling to get the key in the lock without having the bag slide down her arm and…
What the heck?
As soon as she fit the key in, the door creaked open, like it had never been properly closed and locked.
But it had been. She remembered locking it on her way out that morning. Maybe Ray had stopped by to check the property?
Go in swinging, slugger.
She pushed the door all the way open and stood in the threshold, listening.
Nothing but quiet came to her from all corners of the house. The front room and kitchen appeared to be exactly as she’d left them. Okay, mystery solved. Ray must have come by earlier and neglected to lock up when he left. She closed the door behind her, dropped her keys in her bag, crossed the living room, and put the bag on the small kitchen table.
“Hi, Lilah.”
Heart leaping to her throat, she whirled fast enough to startle a cry from the daughter she’d just jostled out of sleep with her sudden motion. A figure sat on the living room sofa, shrouded in shadows, but she didn’t need light to know who it was. “What are you doing here, Trent?” Since it was within reach, she flicked the kitchen light on.
He stood, smiled his orthodontic perfect smile, and took a step toward her. He held a bottle of champagne in one hand and a bouquet of red roses in the other. “You know why I’m here. We never finished our date. We owe it to ourselves to do that.”
Translation? You owe it to me. What an ass. A spoiled, entitled, self-centered ass. “Now’s not a very good time,” she said over Shayla, who started fussing in earnest. Strangely, after the initial shock wore off, she wasn’t so much afraid as furious. Especially when he tipped his head to the side and smiled wider.
“I won’t take no for an answer. Here.” He held out the flowers. “Why don’t you put these in water?”
“I need to put her to bed before I do anything. She’s tired. It’s past her bedtime.”
“Yeah.” He winced at her irate scream. “I’m picking up on that. I’ll wait here.”
“You do that,” she muttered and stalked down the hall. “I’ll be right back.”
It took only seconds to transfer Shayla from carrier to crib. She hated leaving her there, upset and crying. She never did that under normal circumstances, but tonight’s circumstances were far from normal.
Moving down the hall toward the living room, she saw him loitering there, still holding his flowers and champagne. She extended her hand. “Why don’t I take that? I have lots of experience popping corks.”
“Why don’t you?” He grinned and handed the bottle over.
…
“Dammit.” Ford cursed as he cast off the final bootie of the set he’d knitted for Shayla. Overall, the hat and booties had turned out pretty good. Nowhere as good as Wing’s sweater, but still…
“Here.” From the other side of the bar, Wing held out a hand. The crowd had thinned down to locals as most of the cruise ship day trippers had caught the shore boat back to the ship. “Let me do it. You’re going to mess up.”
“I’m not messing up. I know what I’m doing.”
“Doesn’t look like it. Why are you futzing with the knot? Tie it off.” He pointed to the long skein connecting the bootie to the ball of yarn sitting on the bar. “Cut the cord and call it done.” He picked up the scissors and prepared to make the cut.
“Don’t!” Ford angled away. “I’m leaving it attached.” His raised voice and sudden movement caught Mia’s attention at the other end of the bar, where she sat batting her lashes at Louis. She raised her brows. He gave her the I’ve-got-my-eyes-on-you look. She rolled hers and resumed torturing his employee.
Wing gave him a skeptical look. “Why?”
“Because”—he freed the bootie from the needle and held it up—“that’s the way I want it.”
“I don’t understand you, man.”
“You don’t need to understand.” He placed the bootie with its trail of yarn into the brown paper to-go bag with the mate and the matching hat. “Lilah needs to understand.”
“Understand what? That you can’t work scissors?”
“That I’m sorry.”
“She’s going to get ‘I’m sorry’ out of a bootie with a big old sloppy trail of yarn attached?”
He picked up that bag and place it under the bar. “That’s the plan.”
“You need a better plan, man. I recommend—”
Ford held up a hand because his phone vibrated in his pocket. He slid it out and absently noted sneaky Bridget had changed his background to the photo of Lilah, Shayla, and him, but the number flashing across the screen had thoughts of giving her shit for it straight out of his head. Lilah was calling. His blood rushed as he hit the accept button and brought the phone to his ear. “Lilah?”
Nothing. Dead air. Butt dial? “Lilah?” he said again, louder. Still no response. No sound at all. Shrugging, he ended the call and left his phone on the bar. He’d never gotten an accidental call from her, but in general, it was a common enough thing. No reason for his pulse to skip.
“You want to apologize to a woman,” Wing went on, “you need flowers. Florist flowers, not some wild-growing whatevers you pick from the roadside—trust me, I learned that the hard way—and, if you really fucked up, better add jewelry.”
“Wing?”
“Yeah?”
“Appreciate the advice”—guy I would never take advice from—“but I got this.”
Wing’s expression conveyed all kinds of doubt. “All I’m saying is…”
Ford’s phone vibrated on the bar. Lilah’s number lit the screen again. This time, in the seconds it took him to hit accept and say, “Lilah?” his gut clenched. Again, she didn’t answer. Again, no sound at all came from the other end of the line. “Lilah,” he repeated, louder, while something urgent fired his blood.
Wing silently mouthed, “What’s wrong?”
He disconnected. “I don’t know. Something. She should be home by this time of night. I’m going to drive over and check on her. Mike,” he called and waited until the short-order chef’s round face appeared in the window to the kitchen before saying, “I need you to close.” At Mike’s salute, he shouted down the bar, “Mia, Louis, we’re rolling—”
“I’ll take her home,” Wing volunteered. “I’ll take ’em both. Go.”
“He’ll want to walk her to the door. Give that about thirty seconds and then lay on the horn or you’ll be waiting all night.”
“Hey, I was a teenager once, too. I know how it works. Go.”
“I’m gone. Thanks,” he added as he grabbed the to-go bag, his phone and his keys. During the drive to Lilah’s, he balanced on the line between unspecified dread that something was wrong at the cottage—based on the inconclusive evidence of two seemingly unintentional dials on her part—and prickly embarrassment at how he’d grasped at such a thin justification for driving out to check on her. To see her. A man hoping to deliver the kind of no-holds-barred apology she deserved, founded on the notion that she was, in fact, a capable, competent woman, probably ought not preface that with, “I worried you were in trouble you couldn’t handle on your own.”
But he was worried, dammit, even more so when he parked in front of the cottage, next to her Jeep, climbed out of his truck, and immediately heard Shayla crying. Not the kind of cry she made when she wanted to be fed or changed. This lung-straining cry he’d never heard from her before—the angry, desperate sound of an unattended baby. The kind of cry Lilah would never ignore. Bag in hand, he took the porch steps in one giant stride and made it to the door in time to see Lilah through the big picture window. She stood in the front room, talking with some guy…no. He focused on the profile. Not some guy. The guy from before. Can’t-take-no-for-an-answer guy. He watched through a slow-motion fog as she smiled her well-practiced welcome-to-Captivity smile at him and reached for something.
Trent handed her a bottle of champagne.
Shayla cried. All he could hear was the baby crying.
Lilah gripped the bottle by the neck and swung it into Trent’s shoulder.
Shit. He came through the door.
While the guy hunched sideways and tried to recover from the shoulder blow, she brought the bottle up between his legs, hard, and dropped him to his knees. By the time Ford stepped between them and gripped Lilah’s wrist before she brought the bottle down again, the fool was fetal on the floor, cupping the place where his balls had been before she’d slugged them into the stratosphere with help from her little friend Dom Perignon.
Sound clicked back on as Lilah’s cool gaze met his. “Can I be done with guys my age now?”
“Totally up to you.” He slid the bottle from her hand. “You can definitely be done with that one.”
She lifted her chin. Her green eyes turned a degree cooler. “What are you doing here?”
“That’s…hard to explain. I take it you had an uninvited guest?”
“Yes. I need to get Shayla, and then I need to call the sheriff.”
Good girl. “You get her. I’ll make the call.” And make sure this stalker stays down.
“No. Keep him where he is, but I’m making the call.” With that, she turned and hurried down the hall. Seconds later, Shayla quieted, comforted in her mother’s arms.
From the floor, Trent wheezed, “What the fuck? Call the sheriff, you crazy bitch. I’m pressing charges for assault and battery.”
He crouched down, champagne in hand, and brought the cork-end of the bottle into Trent’s line of vision. “Another word, a single move out of you, and I shove this up your ass. Nod if you understand.”
Golden boy nodded.
Lilah returned with Shayla and detoured to the kitchen to dig her phone out of the diaper bag she’d left on the table. Since Trent wouldn’t be mobile anytime soon, Ford crossed to Lilah and lifted Shayla from her arms. “I’ve got her. You make your call.”
He sat on the arm of the sofa, directly over Trent, and cuddled Shayla while Lilah spoke with dispatch. He rocked the baby to sleep and kept an eye on Trent-fucking-Kane while sirens screamed closer.
Once the deputies arrived, he snuggled Shayla into her crib and activated the musical mobile that hung over it while they took a disbelieving Trent into custody—Call my father! Don’t you know who I am?—and recorded Lilah’s statement. He returned to arm of the sofa to provide his own statement. Finally, the lawmen left with Captivity’s newest detainee, and they were alone.
Lilah sank to the sofa beside him, laid her head back and closed her eyes. “Jesus.”
Not touching her was not an option. He slid his hand behind her neck and tipped her head his way. Her lashes lifted and her pupils fixed on him.
“Are you okay?”
She lowered her eyelids and exhaled. “Yes.” Then she lifted her lashes and met his stare. “Stupid jerk.”
“Hey, now.”
That caused her lips to twitch, which reassured him that she really was okay. “Not you. Trent.” A reluctant sigh followed, and she looked away again. “You were right. He wasn’t going to hear ‘no’ from me no matter how often I said it.”
“You showed him. You’re not going to have to repeat yourself this time, I’m thinking.” He squeezed her shoulder. “You acted fast, decisively, and laid him out. Then you followed through by calling the sheriff and pressing charges. Proud of you, slugger.”
That earned him another small smile. “Slugger. Hmm. Could be he got me at the right moment—or the wrong one, for him. I guess I had some pent-up aggression, and he made himself the target.”
“He deserved it. Uh, anyone else you want to take a swing at?”
“Ha. Don’t tempt me.” She pierced him with a sharp look. “Not that I’m not grateful, but why are you here?”
“I got your calls. At first, I thought it was an accidental dial, because you didn’t say anything, but after the second one, I just…I don’t know. I knew something wasn’t right. I followed an instinct to come over and check on you.”
She scrunched her brow and frowned. “I didn’t call.”
He pulled out his phone and showed her the recent calls screen. “You dialed me. Twice.”
She stared at the screen, then up at him, and slowly shook her head. “I didn’t make those calls. My phone was in the diaper bag the whole time—until I got it to call the sheriff’s department.” Rising, she crossed to the kitchen table and got her phone. A tap, a scroll, and then she walked back to the sofa and showed him her call log. Just as she’d said, it reflected no calls to him.
The tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “That’s…weird.”
“It is,” she agreed but didn’t look too uneasy about it. “Want to hear more weirdness?”
“Okay.” He shifted down to the seat beside her, took her hand in his, linked their fingers together.
“Back in the Jeep, before I came into the house tonight, I had a little…hallucination, I guess I’d call it. Shay showed up in the passenger seat and told me to go in swinging.”
The chill returned. He rubbed his free hand over the back of his neck. “Shay, huh?”
She nodded.
“Is he, uh…still hanging around anywhere?”
“Not that I can see, no.”
Some of the chill abated. “Well, I said it before, but if anybody could find a way to bend the rules of the afterlife, it would be him, and if anyone could give him a reason to bend them, it would be you. You and Shayla. He loved you.”
Her lips turned up in a soft, slightly sad smile. “I know.”
Ford faced her, took her other hand, and inhaled slowly to calm his suddenly pounding heart. “He’s not the only one, Lilah. I love you, too. I love you. I love Shayla.”
“I know,” she repeated and held his gaze. Though her voice stayed calm, fierce green eyes shot double-barreled challenge at him. “You love us enough to set us free. Question is, Ford, do you love us enough to keep us? Because I don’t need freedom to figure out what I want.” Her chin took on a stubborn jut to match the challenge in her eyes. “I know what I want, but I refuse to sit here and demand that you trust me, or negotiate with you, or beg you, and even though I’m right and you’re so, so wrong—”
“I finished knitting.” He reached for the bag, handed it to her. “Here.”
She stared at the bag, then at him. “This is hopeless. You can’t even finish the conversation.”
“I didn’t say I’m done with the conversation. I said I’m done knitting.” He jiggled the bag. “Go on. Check it out.”
Her expression could not have been more aggrieved, but she took that bag, reached in, and pulled out the hat first. Her eyes immediately misted. “Oh, Ford. It’s adorable.” She ran her thumb over his careful, even stitches. “A keepsake. Something she’ll pass down to her own babies one day.”
The idea of that punched him hard somewhere under his lungs. “There’s more,” he managed through the breathlessness. “I did the booties, too.”
She reached in and took the first one out, admired it. “So perfect. I can’t thank you enough,” she finished, but her expression turned confused as she pulled out the second bootie, with the long strand of yarn trailing to the rest of the skein. She glanced at him. “What’s all this?”
He took the ball of yarn. “This is the rest of our conversation.”
She bit her lip and lowered the bootie to her lap. “I don’t follow.”
“Well, Lilah, way back when I first learned you had a baby on the way, I promised you my friendship with no strings attached. I can’t make good on that offer anymore. I never really could, to be honest.”
Her eyes went wide and troubled. “We’re not friends anymore?”
“What? No.” Christ, he was messing this up. “What I’m trying to say is that this keepsake comes with a string attached.” He plucked the trailing yarn. “A big one.” Slowly, he draped and looped a length of the yarn around her.
Her eyes narrowed. “What kind of string?”
