“For what?” The other man didn’t look happy.
Trent hugged Rebecca closer. He didn’t dare kiss her again. “For this woman, of course. Your loss is my gain.”
It sent the supercilious bastard on his way, trailed by the Ice Queen who deserved him. Trent kept his arm around Rebecca until the other couple was out of sight.
That was when her shoulders slumped and she slid away from his embrace. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“What?” He couldn’t help smiling at Rebecca, because Dr. SOB was out of her life and because she looked so damn cute with cotton candy in her hair.
“Pretend for Ray.”
Trent shrugged. “He was trying to do a number on you.”
“I know.” She sighed. “I know, and I still can’t help falling for it. After I caught him cheating, it was as if he blamed me for his own failings.”
“Spouses are pigs.”
She laughed, as he’d hoped she would. Then she sobered. “Sometimes I feel bad about being so pessimistic about love. Then again, sometimes I feel smug.”
“I only feel smart.”
She laughed again. “At least you’re honest. Ray wasn’t.”
“Neither was my ex-wife.”
“I suppose that means we have more in common than I would ever have suspected,” Rebecca replied.
“Yeah. Cheating spouses and a lousy attitude toward love.”
“There’s the pregnancy, too.” Rebecca’s eyes bored straight into his. “And I have to be honest and up-front about it, Trent. I need to make sure you understand that I will never, ever give up my baby. I want you to give me sole custody.”
While he’d known that was what she was after, it made him almost angry to hear her say it. “Am I such a bad guy?”
Her gaze dropped. “You’re not a bad guy, no.” Color stained her cheeks and she pressed her lips together.
It made him think of the kiss. That surprising burst of heat. Maybe he would be better off distancing himself permanently from her. From the baby.
But he couldn’t! Memories slammed him from all sides. Chubby cheeks, little fingers, hero worship. He thought of his nephew and Robbie Logan. He couldn’t lose another child. He couldn’t.
“I have to be honest, too,” he said. “I can’t just walk away, Rebecca.”
She nodded, as if he’d confirmed her worst fears. “We’ll have to come up with another plan, then.”
Yes, another plan. He thought they could, because, despite their initial misfires, they got along well enough. Very well, as a matter of fact. They could laugh together, enjoy each other’s company, enjoy a kiss. Hell, that was more than his own parents had found in their marriage.
“Our baby should have a mother and a father in its life,” he said. “Full-time.”
Rebecca shrugged. “That’s ideal, but not a necessity.”
Trent thought of his parents’ marriage again. They’d lived separate lives, for all intents and purposes, but in the same house. They’d had the children between them, along with a boatload of animosity, but what if the animosity hadn’t been there? What if they could have gotten along, two separate beings who shared living space and their progeny? That could have worked.
It could work.
“Maybe we should get married,” he said aloud, trying out the sound of it. “What do you think?”
Four
D ressed in his disguise of tattered jeans, plaid flannel shirt over a sweatshirt and Seattle Mariners baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, Everett Baker stood concealed on the other side of the flimsy, plywood back wall of the cotton-candy booth, listening to the couple inside. He knew Rebecca Holley by sight from his job as an accountant at the Children’s Center. Trent Crosby he’d never met. At least not since they were children. Perhaps he should feel bad for eavesdropping on them, but eavesdropping was the least of his crimes.
The two in the booth would have other reasons to despise him.
Just as he’d begun to despise himself since he’d been on the run from the FBI.
But Nancy loves me.
He had to hold on to that. He’d already told Portland General Hospital’s nurse Nancy Allen about the things he’d done, yet miraculously, she still loved him. She still believed in him.
He had to prove to her that her faith in him wasn’t groundless. That there was a reason to love him. So leaving town was no longer an option. He had to own up to his crimes.
Though confident that no one would recognize the well-pressed bean-counter he’d been in his new grunge-guise, Everett walked behind the facades of the booths set up for the fair, where no one could see him. Even before the FBI had begun looking for him, that was how he’d lived most of his life—behind a facade, and distant from other people. Most of the time he blamed himself for that distance, it was his fault he was so shy, his fault he couldn’t reach out and let people see who he really was.
Other times he realized that his childhood had forced that role and those ways upon him.
“Daddy!” Through the plywood barriers he could hear a young boy’s voice. “Can we go to the park now? You promised we’d play ball today.”
Play ball.
A familiar scene fluttered through his mind. He used to think it was a fantasy, or something from an old movie or television program that he couldn’t remember watching. But now he knew it for what it was—a memory. A box with crinkly silver paper. More paper inside. And inside that, smelling almost as good as his mother’s flowery perfume, a beautiful leather baseball mitt, just his size.
Can we play ball now, Dad? Can we? Can we?
He’d loved that mitt. He’d loved baseball.
But his father had changed. His father had gone from fun and loving to foul-mouthed and stinking of booze. His mother had changed, too. And his home had never been the same.
He had never been the same. Not anything about him.
Now he found himself standing next to a payphone tucked beside one of the seldom-used side exits of Portland General. Digging through his pockets, he found some change, and without giving himself time to think about it, dialed the number. He’d memorized it from the card the detective had given him when he’d accompanied Nancy to the police station a few weeks before. Then, he’d tried to deflect her warnings about the possibility of a kidnapping ring by telling Detective Levine that the nurse was tired and overworked. He’d tried to give the police officer the impression that she was imagining things.
Now he was determined to confirm the truth of what Nancy had said. With the ringleader of their group, Charlie Prescott, found by the FBI and shot dead, Everett thought it was finally safe to do so.
“Detective Levine,” a voice said over the phone.
He thought of all the people he’d hurt. He thought of all he had to regret.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” The detective sounded impatient.
He thought of Nancy. Nancy and his mother and father—the way they’d been at first. “Hello, Detective,” he said. “We’ve spoken before. About a possible kidnapping ring.”
“Who is this?” the detective barked out.
“This is—” He hesitated, then forced out the words. “This is Everett Baker. I know you and the FBI have