Countdown To Baby

She was gone for quite a while. She must be harvesting the coffee beans, he decided wryly. She was certainly brewing it so long it should be strong enough to walk back into the living room by itself.

She finally reappeared, carrying a steaming mug cradled between both hands. She seemed to be taking care not to meet his eyes. He waited until she

had taken a seat—notably not beside him on the couch, but in one of the chairs. And her body language was no more open or encouraging now than it had been when he had first arrived. “You’re going to have to tell me what’s wrong eventually, you know.”

“There’s nothing wrong, Geoff. I told you, it’s been a long day. There was a rush on our services. A strung-out drug addict made a scene in the waiting room. Detective Collins made an absolute pest of himself, even coming out and accusing Mari of knowing something about black-market drug trafficking. It was all I could do to keep from kicking him out of the clinic myself then, even though it certainly wasn’t my place to do so.”

“It couldn’t have helped your day when you heard I had stupidly wrecked my bike,” he said, trying to imagine how he would have felt if something similar had happened to her. He didn’t even want to think about that.

She scowled down into the coffee. “No. That didn’t help at all.”

Suddenly realizing exactly what she had said before he’d brought up the accident, he straightened sharply on the couch, muttered a curse when his whole left side throbbed in reaction, then said, “What was that about Bryce accusing Mari of drug trafficking?”

“I said he practically accused her. He didn’t come right out and say those words, but he said he doesn’t believe she’s telling him everything she knows. He even implied that her ambition to raise money for the medical research center could make her receptive to drug money.”

“I’ll pound his face in,” Geoff said between clenched teeth as a wave of fury rushed through him.

She answered a bit sarcastically, “Oh, that will help. You and Mari can request adjoining jail cells.”

He made an effort to get his rarely seen temper under control. “I’ll call our lawyer tomorrow and see what I can do about keeping Collins away from Mari.”

“Maybe you had better ask Mari what she wants you to do first. She might not appreciate you rushing to her rescue without telling her. And she probably wouldn’t be at all pleased that I’ve been reporting to you about what I accidentally overheard Detective Collins say to her in the privacy of her office.”

“All right, I’ll talk to her. I’ll tell her I’ve heard he’s been on her case and ask her how she wants me to handle it. I can’t believe that guy would still be nursing such a grudge against her that he would let it interfere with his professional objectivity. There’s no way he can honestly believe she would get involved in that kind of sleaze.”

“Of course not. No one who knows Mari would believe such a thing.”

“How did she take it? Tell me she slugged him.”

Cecilia shook her head. “Of course she didn’t slug him. She managed to contain her temper—and her dignity—very well.”

“She should’ve slugged him,” he muttered.

“I never realized you had such a violent side to you.”

“Only when someone messes with someone I care about.” And it occurred to him suddenly that he would be just as belligerent toward anyone who was making trouble for Cecilia.

Because he wasn’t sure she would want to hear that right now, he said only, “Collins has really gone over the line. He couldn’t have a scrap of evidence that Mari is involved in anything suspicious.”

Cecilia started to say something, but stopped when the doorbell rang. Geoff wondered what it was she’d started to tell him. Something she knew about the investigation? Some reason, no matter how unlikely, why Collins may have set his sights on Mari. Making a mental note to ask her later, he watched as she set her coffee cup on the table beside her chair. “That will be the pizza. I’ll get it.”

He held up a hand to keep her in her seat while he rose, exerting all his strength to keep her from seeing how much the movement pained him. “I ordered. I’ll get it.”

She looked as though she was going to argue, but she must have known it would do no good. Settling back into her seat, she subsided into the same moody silence as before, to Geoff’s exasperation.

Cecilia was struggling to act naturally with Geoff this evening, but she didn’t try to delude herself that she was being successful at it. The truth was, she didn’t quite know what she was feeling. Numbness seemed to be the closest description.

She looked down at the half-eaten slice of pizza on her plate, doubtful that she could swallow another bite. She wasn’t usually the type to overreact so dramatically to a trying day, but this day had been more than ordinarily stressful.

“Tell me the truth, Cecilia. Are you angry with me?”

She couldn’t meet his eyes when she answered. “No, of course I’m not angry.”

It wasn’t quite a lie, she assured herself. She wasn’t angry with him…exactly. More perturbed with him for risking his life and scaring her so badly, which was so unreasonable of her that she didn’t know how to explain it to him.

“Then what’s wrong? Did something bad happen with one of your deliveries?”

“No. I’ve already told you how hectic my day was. Nothing specifically upsetting, just a series of complications.”