“Jack!” Olivia glared at her husband.
“What?”
“You’re not going to interview my mother, are you? Can’t you see she’s distraught?”
“Ah …” Jack Griffin had the good grace to look sheepishly at his mother-in-law. “I am a reporter, Olivia, and this is news.”
“I don’t mind, dear,” Charlotte said, placating her daughter by patting her arm. “Ben was our hero, saving Harry and me and … oh, dear. Where is Harry?”
“We’ll look for him, Mom.” She turned to her husband. “Why don’t you talk to Mack,” Olivia suggested. “He can explain about the fire.”
Mack shook his head. It would be more appropriate if Jack talked to the squad commander. “I’m sure Chief Nelson would be happy to answer your questions.” He motioned toward him, and Jack left them, hurrying toward Chief Nelson, pen in hand.
Mack saw Jack scribbling furiously during his conversation with the chief, nodding several times. Once he glanced over his shoulder at his mother-in-law and frowned, which told Mack that the cause of the fire had most likely been attributed to Charlotte—just as he’d guessed. She must have been distracted and left something, maybe the soup she’d mentioned, on the stove. He remembered that she’d talked about reading a magazine.
“You’ll be coming home with us,” Olivia was saying when Mack returned his attention to Ben and Charlotte.
“But, Olivia …”
“Mom, you can’t stay here and you can’t stay with Will. Where would you sleep?”
“It would probably be best if you went with Olivia,” Will concurred as Ben nodded. “My apartment’s pretty small with only the one bedroom. I’d sleep on the sofa if necessary, but frankly, it makes more sense for you to go home with Olivia.”
Charlotte nodded. “I’ll need to collect a few things. Ben,” she said, “will you find Harry?”
“I’ll go in with you,” Mack offered. “It’s better if you don’t go anywhere close to the kitchen until after the fire investigator’s had a chance to finish his report and the insurance people have come by.”
Then Mack joined Ben in looking for the cat. They found him a few minutes later, cowering under the front porch.
“It’s all my fault,” Charlotte was saying when they returned, shaking her head as if to erase the memory of that afternoon. “Harry!” She held out her arms for the cat. “Oh, my sweetie …” She nuzzled his broad head and then raised her eyes to Olivia. “I’m still not clear on what happened….”
“Don’t worry, Mom.”
“If Ben and I are going to be with you for several weeks, I’ll help you as much as I can,” Charlotte promised. “I’ll clean and cook and I won’t be a bother.”
“Mom, you’d never be a bother.”
“I’ll bake for Jack,” she said, her eyes lighting up with anticipation. “You know how he enjoys my baking.”
“Jack doesn’t need you baking for him, Mom.”
“Then I’ll cook him a pot roast. Jack’s fond of my pot roasts.”
“Jack’s fond of food, Mom,” Olivia said. “The fact is, I can’t think of a single thing you cook that he doesn’t dig into like a starving man.”
Charlotte beamed with pride. “Jack’s a man of discriminating taste. Haven’t I always said so?”
“Indeed.” Olivia rolled her eyes. “Come on, Mom, Mack and I’ll help you and Ben collect what you need, starting with the cat carrier. Then we’ll go to our house.”
“You’re sure about this?” Charlotte asked.
“Very sure,” Olivia said, and slid one arm around her mother’s waist.
Ben and Charlotte Rhodes would be fine, Mack mused as he followed them. They had family.
Three
Chad Timmons paced his Tacoma apartment and was so deep in thought, he nearly collided with the wall. That just proved it—the woman drove him to distraction. From the moment he’d met Gloria Ashton, it’d been an on-again, off-again relationship. Like some unpredictable wind, she blew hot and then cold. The worst of it was he’d put up with it. Well, he’d had about all he could take. He refused to play her games anymore—and that was what they were. Games. As far as he could see, there was no way he could win because she kept changing the rules. One day she wanted nothing to do with him. The next, she couldn’t keep her hands off him.
Fine. He’d decided he was finished. And he’d stuck to that. Until Roy McAfee had hurtled into his life like a meteorite on its passage to earth. The crater that blast had left was deep enough to bury him.
Gloria was pregnant—with his baby. He was about to become a father.
Talk about changing the rules …
It all added up now. After they’d spent the night together, Chad had felt so sure they could resolve their differences. He was high on love, his head in the clouds, like some sappy walking cliché. The shock of her taking off without a word had made him feel bereft and stupid. Oh, she’d written a note, but that had explained nothing.
So he’d vowed that if this was how she felt, he’d deal with it. He was finished. Chad had resigned from his position at the Cedar Cove Medical Clinic, moved to Tacoma and accepted a job as an emergency room physician. He’d even started dating someone else. Joni Atkins was a lot less volatile and a lot more decisive.
A baby.
Even now, Chad had difficulty coping with Roy’s news. If he was shocked, he could imagine Gloria’s reaction. Her feelings about him, and about a future with him, seemed tentative, ambivalent at best. She’d moved into the Puget Sound area a few years ago to search for her birth parents. Her adoptive parents had been killed in a small-plane crash and she was virtually without family. Then Gloria discovered something that had completely unsettled her. Her birth parents had eventually married and she had a full sister and brother. She’d told him all that on their first night together—which was also the night they’d met. Their relationship had moved from being strangers to being intimate with reckless speed. That embarrassed Gloria and, frankly, him, too. Chad knew better. So did Gloria. Afterward she’d asked for time to connect with her birth family. She’d done that but nothing had changed. Every advance Chad made was met with stiff resistance. Then it happened again. She’d agreed to a date, and they ended up in bed, which was followed by embarrassment and regret on Gloria’s part. Again.
Now Gloria was pregnant.
She hadn’t told him, although now he assumed she’d come to break the news the day she’d met him in the hospital parking lot. How was he to know what she’d intended? As far as he was concerned, they were finished. That seemed to be what she’d requested; according to the note she’d left him, she wanted nothing more to do with him. If she’d changed her mind, it was too late, or so he’d felt at the time. He’d moved on and he’d advised her to do the same.
Roy, Gloria’s birth father, had taken a tremendous risk by coming to see him. Gloria had asked that Chad be kept in the dark regarding the pregnancy, and Corrie, her birth mother, had agreed. But not Roy.
Years earlier Corrie McAfee had become pregnant while in college. Roy hadn’t learned he was a father until after his daughter had been adopted. Apparently it remained a sore point between Gloria’s birth parents. Roy wasn’t willing to let history repeat itself, although Corrie felt the choice should be Gloria’s alone. Going against his wife’s and daughter’s wishes, Roy made sure Chad knew about the baby.
Chad