His Baby Bonus. Laura Marie Altom
he came across as more trustworthy than some of the scary-looking characters around here?
Leaving a twenty and ten on the table, Beau headed outside, shading his eyes against blinding sun.
Heat hovered in undulating waves above the blacktop. Not the best weather for a pregnant lady to be out hitching a ride.
The lot looked quiet. Three semis. Two off, one with the engine idling, stinking up the place with diesel exhaust. An assortment of eleven passenger cars lined the restaurant’s front. Two more passenger cars were filling up at covered gas tanks. On the access road running alongside I-5, a silver minivan whizzed by.
Beau looked to his own vehicle, to the big, pink Caddie, he’d blocked—
What the?
Gracie’s car was gone. The bushes in front of it flattened. His SUV’s grill all busted to hell. She’d even stabbed his driver’s side front tire. He knew it had been her because of the pink-handled metal nail file still stuck in the rubber.
When had she given him the slip? While he’d ordered pie? Common sense told him the bathroom’s location meant it was an interior room with only one exit. How was it a chirpy blonde who had tongue issues with cold grease had so effortlessly gotten away from him not once, but twice?
And how long was it going to take for him to get his tire patched so he could once and for all teach Gracie Sherwood who was boss?
More importantly, how long until he finally got it through his head that just because Gracie was pregnant, that didn’t mean he owed her special favors. He’d bent over backward trying to be kind to his wife, and look where that’d left him. He still hadn’t been able to right the wrong between them. The even sadder truth was that even if he’d wanted to, there was nothing he could’ve done.
Chapter Two
“Listen up,” Beau said to Gracie through a still chain-locked door, six frick-frackin’ hours later, standing on the covered porch of a kitschy, roadside motel just south of Oregon’s Bandon State Park. Surrounded by a brooding fir forest, the brown and gray strip motel with plywood castle towers on either end and a moat-shaped pool with more moss than water looked like some Brothers Grimm fairy tale gone wrong.
It was only seven at night, yet in the shadows, felt more like midnight.
Gracie had parked her pink Caddie in front of her room.
Odds were, Beau never would’ve found her without a tip from a local cop who’d spotted her car. The man had offered his assistance in bringing Gracie in, but after her latest slip, for Beau anyway, this case had gotten personal. Or maybe it had always been personal, he thought, swiping his fingers through his hair.
Seeing how the rest of the crew was scattered at least a hundred miles in all different directions, looked like he had the good fortune to be bringing Ms. Sherwood in all by himself. “It’s time you learned who’s leading this mission. There are a lot of things I’ll put up with, but this hide-and-seek game’s getting old, and—” What was that funny noise?
Was she crying?
Oh, man, if his momma had still been alive to see this, she’d thump him upside his head. His dad still could, for making this little bitty pregnant thing sob.
Ingrid never once cried. Not during the entirety of her cruelly sterile speech.
“T-that’s so—wait,” Gracie said, noisily unhooking the chain. “I can’t even speak.” Whatever kind of girly cry she had going, it grew steadily worse until Beau felt two inches tall. On his list of things he didn’t do, making women cry was at the top. “Oh my gosh, you’re funny. Thanks. I haven’t had a belly laugh like that in—well, since never. At least not in the recent past.”
Funny? She called that donkey braying laughter? At his expense?
Door open, he brushed past her and stormed into the room, wanting for some unfathomable reason to be put off by peeling, smoke-stained wallpaper and the busted-tile bathroom usually indicative of this sort of hole-in-the-wall establishment. What he got was a scene from Southern Living—MTV style.
She’d draped silky-looking scarves over lamps, lending the place an exotic glow. The germy motel bedspread had been replaced with faux fur. Mink? On top of that were a half-dozen pillows, all embroidered with quirky sayings like, Woman cannot live on chocolate alone…She needs shopping, too!
As if all of that wasn’t enough, the smell was…fantastic? Some heavenly concoction simmering on a two-burner kitchenette stove sent his ravenous stomach into a growling fit. Too bad he was here to drag her back to Portland and not to eat!
“You haul all of this stuff around with you?” he asked.
Stepping inside, Gracie shut the door. His one question turned her smile upside down. “This stuff, my cooking gear and a few clothes were all I brought into my marriage, so that’s all I took when it was over.”
“Sure,” he said with a nod.
“Sure?” She shook her head. “I tell you my life is over, and that’s all you have to say?”
She’d paraded spicy-smelling candles across the top of the TV, and he sliced his finger through the flames. “Sorry. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re returning to Portland with me. Now.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m exhausted. I’ve been driving all day. I still have a couple more sauce variations to try tonight. If you insist on dragging me back, I’ll go peaceably—but in the morning.”
“Fair enough,” he said, but was he a fool for taking her at her word?
Suddenly, standing there, looking at her, there wasn’t enough air in the room. Her candles and the rich sauce were eating it all.
The size of her stomach and glow of her skin were similar to Ingrid’s, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Ingrid had been out for Ingrid. Period. But Gracie, this drive of hers to win a contest was all for the sake of her baby—so that he or she could live a better life. A safer life. Beau admired the hell out of her. And wanted to know more about her than the bland fare found in her file.
“If you have to stay,” she said, “you might as well make yourself at home.” She was back in the tiny yet workable kitchen, dumping pasta she’d had bubbling on the back burner into a colander she’d already set in the sink. “The TV only gets five channels, but I guess that’s better than nothing.”
He shrugged.
Had she always been so pretty? Had so many curls? She’d cupped her hands to her big belly, cast him a half grin that lit her whole face. He wanted to stay mad at her, but she was like a too cute kitten—only she wasn’t a cat, but a woman. Had she been a cat, he would’ve just played with her. Stroked her fur and scratched behind her ears. Just thinking about what Gracie would do to him if he tried either of those activities made him smile.
His ex had been hard as nails. No petting allowed.
“Mind letting me in on the joke?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder while giving her brew a stir.
“Nah. But thanks for asking.” He winked.
She frowned. “Fine. Don’t tell me.” Back to stirring, she hummed a soft, nonsensical tune.
“I won’t.”
“Why do you have to be so obstinate?” she asked, wiping her hands on an industrial-type white apron, then crossing the room to switch on the TV with a remote.
“Wasn’t aware I was being anything.”
“You’re obviously uptight,” she said, switching past news, Wheel of Fortune and an infomercial, finally landing on a black and white movie. “What you need is a good meal. A nice bottle of wine. You’re all cranked up inside.”