Read Online Secrets Rising by Sally Berneathy - Free Book Online Page B

be perfect."
    "The important things are perfect. I love you, you love me, and we're both going to love our baby more than anybody's ever loved a baby before since the world began. I can't wait to tell Mom and Dad. And Charles. I can just see his face when this kid wraps her tiny little fist around his thumb and calls him Uncle Charles . I don't think he had the best of families back in Ohio. This baby is going to be very spoiled with so many people adoring her."
    For a fleeting instant an ugly thought reared up amidst all the happiness, but Mary quickly shoved it aside.
    It was impossible.
    No way could that one nightmare experience, that cruel torture that bore no similarity to making love, result in the miracle of a child, the ultimate gift of love.
    "Yes," she agreed, her voice firm, "our baby is going to be spoiled rotten. That's the way it should be."

 
     
    Chapter 7
     
    Jake held the heavy wooden door open for Rebecca to enter the Smokehouse Barbecue, a block off the main street of downtown Edgewater.
    They'd had breakfast together, visited Doris Jordan together, and now they were having lunch together. What's wrong with this picture?
    Hell, what was right with it?
    Nothing that he could see.
    He was a loner. Rebecca desperately needed somebody. One hundred eighty degrees out. Opposite ends of the spectrum.
    For her sake if not for the sake of doing his job, he had to get rid of her. He couldn't let her start to depend on him, to need him when he had nothing to give.
    Nor could he spend any more nights separated from her by nothing but a thin wall. Not after he'd seen what she slept in.
    The small restaurant was crowded, but Jake located an empty table and guided Rebecca toward it with a gentle hand at the small of her back.
    If you're so damned anxious to get rid of her, why do you keep touching her every chance you get?
    Jake ignored the nagging voice in the back of his head since he didn't want to think about the answer to that question.
    "Smells good in here," she said as they sat down at the square table covered with a red checked vinyl cloth.
    "Yes, it does. I didn't think I was hungry after that big breakfast, but that smell has changed my mind."
    Rebecca frowned. "If you weren't hungry, why did you suggest we come here to eat?"
    She was as good with questions as that little voice in his head. He knew the answer but he wasn't about to tell her that he did it because he hadn't known what else to do with her after they left Doris Jordan's house, because she made him uncomfortable and a public restaurant seemed a good place to be with her.
    "I thought you might be hungry," he lied.
    The waitress came to take their orders—two sandwiches, tea for her and beer for him.
    "Doris Jordan's a special lady," Rebecca said when the waitress left.
    "Yeah," Jake agreed. "She is. Special and a lady."
    "She's lonely."
    "Who isn't? She's doing all right."
    "I guess." She unrolled her paper napkin and carefully laid out the cheap flatware. "We didn't learn anything from her."
    "More than you realize. I told you before, detective work goes one inch at a time. Sometimes it goes by centimeters. It's tedious and time-consuming. That's why you pay me to do the work while you wait at home in air-conditioned comfort for my reports."
    "And I told you before, I can't do that."
    They sat staring at each other, stalemated.
    She was so self-contained today, it was hard to believe this was the same distraught woman who'd run to his room last night.
    In the silence that lengthened at their table, the laughter and talking around them, punctuated by the clink of silverware on plates, seemed to grow louder. The ding of the bell announced another order was up.
    Jake didn't like crowds, avoided them as much as possible, and this place was beginning to feel very crowded. When they'd first walked in, the air had felt cool, but that was compared to the noon heat outside. Now it seemed warm and suffocating, the sweet, spicy scent of barbecue