The Pregnancy Plot (Brothers In Arms: Retribution Book 2) (8 page)

“This is Chris Kitchens. Chris, my sister, Louise Moore, and her friend Kip...”

“Chandler.” Kip stuck out a surprisingly steady hand. “You a local?”

Nina held her breath and glanced at Jase.

“Me?” Chris crumpled up his napkin and tossed it onto his empty plate. “Naw, I just came out here to find Nina.”

Lou blew a strand of dyed blond hair from her face. “Everyone wants Nina.”

“Oh, no, it’s not like that. I’m Simon’s brother.”

Nina was clenching her jaw so tightly her teeth ached.

Lou widened her eyes. “Am I supposed to know who Simon is?”

“Simon Skinner. Nina’s ex-fiancé.”

“Whoa-ho, girl, you work fast.”

“Don’t you have a joint to smoke somewhere?” Nina kicked Jase under the table, but she didn’t know what she expected him to do. From the look on his face, he didn’t know, either.

“What does that mean?” Chris cocked his head and ran a thumb across his mustache.

“This—” Lou poked a finger in Jase’s direction “—is Nina’s fiancé now, so I don’t know how long ago she was engaged to your brother.”

Chris’s jaw hung open as he turned to Nina, his gaze darting to Jase’s face. “Really?”

“Sorry, Chris.” Nina pressed her fingers against her hot cheek.

“That’s your business, but is what you told me about Simon’s PTSD true or did you two break it off because of Jase?”

“Not at all.” Jase kicked her back. “I met Nina after the breakup. It just happened fast for us.”

“Wish you all the best, then.” Chris reached for his wallet. “Let me pay for dinner for all your trouble today.”

Jase already had cash out. “We’ll get it.”

“Tell you what.” Chris tapped her phone. “You send me a few of those pictures of Simon, I’ll pick up dinner and we’ll call it even.”

“I’d be happy to.” She shoved her phone across to him. “Call me from your phone so I have the number.”

Kip had wandered off to the bar, but Lou hadn’t given up yet. Placing a hand on Chris’s shoulder, she leaned over the table. “If you want a ride back to the mainland in style, Kip and I can hook you up.”

Chris looked up from placing his call to Nina’s cell. “Really?”

“If the boats stop running because of this storm, Kip has a line on a helicopter.”

Nina raised her eyebrows. “Kip has a helicopter?”

“I don’t know about that. It probably belongs to his brother, who’s a big-time lawyer. I just know because I heard him on the phone asking around for helipads on the island.”

“Thank you, I’ll keep your offer in mind.”

Disappointed that she hadn’t stirred up more trouble, Lou joined Kip at the bar, where he had a beer waiting for her. They drank them down and left before Chris even paid the bill.

When the waitress dropped off the check, Chris studied it and said, “I think they charged us for two more beers. You just had one, right?”

“Yeah.”

Chris waved to the waitress. “We just had two beers at this table, and you charged us for four.”

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “That couple who was at your table earlier? They had a couple of beers at the bar and said you were picking up the tab.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “And you didn’t think to check with us first?”

“Sorry, hon. They were over here.”

“Chris, I’ll pay for my sister’s drinks.”

“That’s all right. Some bad blood there?”

Jase snorted. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Nina’s
step
sister has some issues.”

“I sure hope when Simon and I finally meet, we’ll get along. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Good luck with that, man.” He clapped Chris on the shoulder.

Nina grabbed her jacket and scooted out of the booth. If Chris ever found Simon, would he report back to him that she’d gotten engaged? How had everything gotten so complicated? She’d come out to Break Island to escape complication.

Jase opened the door of the restaurant, and as Nina stepped onto the sidewalk, droplets of rain, propelled by the wind, pelted her face. “Looks like we’re getting the edge of that storm creeping in.”

“You left your umbrella in the restaurant. I’ll get it.”

As Jase returned to the restaurant, Nina turned to Chris. “Do you plan to stick around the island?”

“Maybe for a day or two, but don’t worry. I can look around on my own. You’ve been helpful and you didn’t have to be.”

“I just hope you find what you’re looking for, Chris, and that you’re not disappointed.” She reached out to him, feeling guilty and sorry at the same time.

As he hugged her, a piercing screech came from behind. Before Nina had a chance to react, a strong force yanked on the back of her hair, dragging her from Chris’s embrace.

She staggered backward, her arms flailing.

“You bitch! You have to take everything. One fiancé. Two fiancés. Are you working on your third?”

As Lou screamed in her ear, she began driving her bony knee into Nina’s back.

Nina’s feet scrambled on the wet sidewalk to gain purchase, and then suddenly the threat evaporated. She turned to see Jase lifting Lou off her feet by the back of her jacket.

Lou dangled there like a scarecrow until Jase set her down with a jolt.

“Keep your hands off Nina. She’s pregnant.”

Chapter Nine

Everyone froze. She still had her hands splayed in front of her to ward off Lou’s next attack, but she didn’t have to worry.

Lou’s feet were rooted to the sidewalk where Jase had dropped her, with her mouth hanging open and a wild look in her eye.

Even Chris stood as still as a statue.

How the hell did Jase know about her pregnancy? And why the hell did he choose to announce it in front of these two particular people?

Chris broke the silence first. “Is it...? Is it...?”

Nina took a shuddering breath. She couldn’t handle this—not now. “No, Chris. It’s not Simon’s. It’s the reason Jase and I decided to speed up our commitment.”

She finally met Jase’s eyes. Poor guy. First she’d foisted an engagement on him and now a baby. Poor guy? Her nostrils flared. How dare he spill the beans like this in the middle of the sidewalk.

Lou sank to the ground, her keening wail putting an end to any conversation. Nina shot a worried look at her stepsister crumpled on the ground, rocking back and forth.

She finally noticed Kip hugging the wall near where Lou must’ve launched her attack. She swept her arm toward Lou. “Help her. Lou, what’s wrong?”

“A baby, a baby, a baby.” Lou raised her tear-streaked face, her mascara little black rivulets down her cheeks. “I’ve always wanted a baby.”

Lou’s words sent a shower of cold fear down her back. Lou had never expressed any interest in children before. Now she wanted a baby?

Nina pushed a lock of wet hair from her face. “You need help, Lou.”

“We’re leaving.” Jase stepped into the circle that had formed around Lou’s forlorn figure. He put an arm around Nina’s shoulders and held out his hand to Chris. “I hope you find peace with your brother.”

Then he pointed a finger at Kip. “You’d better get her out of here unless you want to see her get locked up for being drunk in public.”

Jase steered her down the street, opening the umbrella over their heads.

Nina glanced over her shoulder at both Kip and Chris helping Lou to her feet and Chris draping his jacket over her shoulders. Chris was that kind of guy, just like his brother used to be.

When they got to the truck, Jase helped her in and then blasted the heat when he started the engine. He rested his hands on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead without putting the truck in gear.

“Sorry, you know, sorry I did that.”

She folded her hands across her belly. “How did you know I was pregnant?”

His hands tightened around the steering wheel. “I don’t know. Little things. You didn’t drink alcohol. Your silhouette when you were all wet after I pulled you from the water. You put your hands on your stomach a lot.”

“Do I?” She lifted her hands from her stomach and sighed.

“I was waiting for you to tell me. I figured you’d do it in your own time, or, you know, you don’t owe me any explanations or anything.”

“But why then?” She watched a droplet of water tremble on the end of a strand of hair and then fall to her thigh. “Why did you have to blurt it out at that moment—in front of Lou, in front of Chris?”

“I don’t know.” He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. “I wanted to stop Lou without physically throwing her against a wall.”

“Yeah, well, picking her up by the scruff of the neck did a pretty good job of stopping her.”

“She was still moving and squirming. I knew the minute I let her go she’d resume her assault on you.”

“Thanks for stepping in, but I wish you hadn’t let the cat out of the bag about my pregnancy.”

He drummed his thumbs against the steering wheel. “Why didn’t you tell Chris it was Simon’s? It
is
Simon’s, isn’t it?”

“Of course he’s Simon’s.”

“You’re having a boy?” Jase turned toward her, but his gaze shifted over her shoulder to stare into the wet night.

“Yes, and I didn’t want to tell Chris because I didn’t want to complicate his life even more than it is. He’s so hell-bent on finding Simon and so convinced that he’s going to have some wonderful, brotherly reunion, I didn’t want to dump this on him, too.”

“Are you ever going to tell him?”

She patted her cell phone in her purse. “I have his info. I’ll tell him later when everything settles down, and if he wants to be an uncle to the baby, that’s fine. He seems like a decent guy.”

His eyes locked on to hers. “You’re not trying to keep this pregnancy from Simon, are you?”

“God, no. I wouldn’t do that. But as you can tell from Chris’s fruitless search, Simon is not an easy guy to find. But if he is stalking me, he needs to get help before I tell him anything.”

As always when she started talking about Simon, Jase’s face closed down and shutters came down over his eyes. He started the truck. “Why do you think Lou went off like that?”

“Because she’s unbalanced, and the way she self-medicates with booze and drugs only makes her worse. She needs a good treatment facility. Dad offered many times to pay for it, but she refused.”

He checked the rearview mirror and pulled onto the street. “I think she could be a danger to you and the baby, Nina, and I think you’re fooling yourself if you think her stunt with the boat and her attack tonight weren’t meant to cause you physical harm.”

“You’re probably right.” She twisted her fingers together and leaned her head against the cool glass of the window. “I came up here to Break Island to get away from the fear and the tension, and it looks like they followed me.”

“Do you really think Simon is stalking you?”

She hadn’t meant to harp on her suspicions, especially since Jase was taking this protectiveness thing to a whole new level.

“I don’t have any reason to believe he is. When we split up, he left—no begging, no threats—it was as if he couldn’t care less. I don’t know why he would be stalking me, but I can’t think of anyone else who would tamper with my car and lie in wait for me in a parking structure.”

“What?” He slammed on the brakes in the middle of the road and the truck’s back tires fishtailed.

She grabbed the dashboard. “For being an overly protective type, you should learn to drive more carefully.”

“Someone tampered with your car? You didn’t mention that before.”

“I’m not really sure. I had no proof, but my car had been working just fine before that and it sure seemed like there was a car following me.”

“When did this happen? Right after Simon left or later?”

“Not right away. It was later, after I discovered I was pregnant. That’s why I suspected Simon. I figured maybe he found out about the baby and got some weird notion in his head to start following me around—maybe to see if the baby was his.”

“You never saw him?”

“Oh, I saw flashes of red hair here and there.” She tugged on her earlobe. “Just like today, only today I matched the hair to a real person. In LA, I was never able to do that. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?” He’d continued driving and Moonstones came into view.

“I thought the hormones were making me paranoid. At least here on Break Island, Lou really
is
after me. It’s not all in my head.”

“Do you believe the feelings you had in LA were all in your head?”

She planted her hands on her knees and hunched forward. “The feelings I had were real. Whether or not those feelings were based on anything real is another story. Does that make sense?”

“Yep.”

They dashed through the rain, and when they stepped inside the B and B, Jase hung up the umbrella on a hook by the front door. “I’m going to get that fire going. You go get into some dry clothes, or better yet, some warm pajamas. Do you want some warm milk? Tea?”

“I’ll take some tea.” She turned at the hallway that led to the back of the house. “Are you always this bossy, Jase Buckley?”

“This is nothing.”

She disappeared into the back, and Jase strode to the fireplace and prodded the charred wood from yesterday’s fire. He hoisted a few more pieces onto the grate and tucked some kindling into the spaces.

In two minutes, he had the flames dancing across the wood and he stared into the flickers of orange and gold. How could he have been so stupid?

Straight up, he wouldn’t be able to tell if a woman was pregnant any more than he’d be able to tell what she ate for dinner. He must’ve bluffed his way through that one, because she seemed to believe his line of bull.

If the boss could’ve seen his performance tonight out on that sidewalk, Coburn would’ve questioned his sanity.

Nina had been faster on her feet than he’d been, telling Chris that Simon wasn’t the father. All he needed was for Chris Kitchens to be hanging around Nina, bringing up Simon every other minute.

Man, he felt for the guy. Waiting all this time to track down his brother only months after that brother had died. Once Prospero and the CIA could straighten things out regarding Simon Skinner’s story, they’d have to notify Chris...and Nina.

Maybe he’d be long gone by then, out of Nina’s life.

Had she been right about her suspicions in LA? She might believe it was Simon who’d been stalking her, but he knew that couldn’t be true. Prospero had finally confirmed Max Duvall’s story, and even if they never recovered Simon’s body, they had no reason to doubt that Duvall had killed him in self-defense. But if not Simon, who?

Would her stepsister have gone down to LA to watch Nina? Stalking didn’t seem to be Lou’s style. She preferred an all-out, in-your-face attack.

Could the boss be right again? Had Tempest already been following Nina in LA? For what purpose? She knew nothing about Simon’s work.

“You’re hogging all the warmth.”

Still crouching in front of the fireplace and a now-blazing fire, he cranked his head around. Nina had wrapped herself in a pink robe that matched her cheeks. She’d dried her hair and it floated around her shoulders like a cloud.

“The flames can be hypnotic.” He rose to his feet and stretched. “And I didn’t make your tea.”

“I can make my own tea.”

“Sit.” He pointed to the chair across from the fireplace. “I’m bossy, remember?”

“It’s sweet of you to be so concerned, but I’m not going to break.”

“Sweet?” He scratched his jaw. “That’s the first time that adjective’s ever been used to describe me.”

“Oh, please.” She settled into the chair and curled her long legs beneath her. “You’re probably great with your nieces and nephews, too.”

“Nieces and nephews? That’s a laugh. My sister’s the type who would eat her young.” He crossed into the kitchen and started filling the kettle with water.

“Really? I’m surprised.”

“You don’t know my sister.”

“No, I mean I’m surprised you’re not an uncle. I would’ve thought the way you picked up on my pregnancy, you’d been around a pregnant woman before. I just assumed your sister...”

He swore under his breath. He was getting himself in deeper and deeper here. He had to stop acting so natural around Nina. This wasn’t natural.

He wasn’t writing a book. He didn’t need to work as a handyman to make money. He hadn’t recognized any signs that she was pregnant. His agency had spied on her.

“A lot of my buddies have been getting married lately and having kids. Seems like a new baby popped out every other month.”

He folded his arms and leaned against the counter that separated the kitchen from the sitting room.

“I suppose these things do run in cycles.” She held her hands out to the fire. “You’re sure you’re not married with five children at home?”

He forced a laugh and then gratefully turned toward the whistling kettle. “Seven.”

“Seven what?”

“Kids.”

She laughed, but it was a tight, mirthless sound. She doubted him.

He had to come clean, had to tell her about Simon—at least the part where he was dead. Coburn had wanted to verify Simon’s death and parts of Max Duvall’s story before releasing any information to Simon’s loved ones. Nina still counted as a loved one, since Simon was the father of the baby she was carrying.

Poor little thing—no daddy from the get-go.

He poured the hot water over the tea bag and carried the cup to her, still curled up in the oversize chair.

She thanked him and winked. “You’re not joining me this time?”

“I discovered I don’t like hot tea.”

“I have cold beer in the fridge.”

“After the day I had, I’m going to take you up on that offer.” He returned to the kitchen and peered into the fridge at three bottles lined up on the shelf. “Are these all local breweries?”

“I have three cases in the storage room and put one of each type in the fridge, just in case. They’re all good.”

He grabbed a pale ale with an interesting label and used a bottle opener to pop the top. He settled into the love seat closest to hers, just like last night.

Only everything between them had changed.

“Don’t you think it would’ve been a better idea to have this baby in your home city with your friends around?”

“I have friends here—a different type of friend, people who knew my parents, women who cooked for my dad during Mom’s illness—the type of friend that will be here for me when the time comes.”

“You don’t have those kinds of friends in LA?”

“I have good friends there, friends to lunch with, meet at coffeehouses, attend concerts with, but not the kind to watch a baby in a pinch or know how to put together a crib or who know a home remedy for colic.” She blew on her tea and sipped it. “Those people are here, and I need those people around me now.”

“I’m sorry...sorry Simon’s not in the picture.”

“I’m not.” She uncurled her legs and wiggled her toes. “Not the way he was acting. I didn’t need another unhinged person in my life—Lou is more than enough.”

“That’s for sure.” He whistled between his teeth. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw her take a flying leap at you. I still think you could’ve taken her down, pregnant or not, if she hadn’t surprised you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I’m not going to get into a brawl with my stepsister in the middle of the street.”

“It makes sense that you kicked Simon out so quickly after what you’ve had to deal with in your own family.”