Cut To The Chase. Julie Kistler

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СКАЧАТЬ still don’t look well,” he noted. He fished around in his backpack and pulled out a bottle of water. “Maybe you should let me take you somewhere cooler, where you can sit down. In the meantime, how about a drink of water?”

      It looked untouched, but still… Did he really think she would drink out of his bottle? She considered. Well, yes, she would. Her mouth was dry, she was overheated, her stomach was unsettled, and that water sounded pretty good, whether there were Adorable Stranger germs on the bottle or not. Lifting her chin, pulling together every shred of composure she could muster, she found a thin smile for her sweet, misguided Galahad and reached for the water.

      After wiping the top, she took two long swallows and then another one, greedily finishing it off. “I feel better now,” she whispered, awkwardly handing back the empty plastic bottle. “Thank you.”

      He smiled. “You’re welcome.”

      Oh, dear. The smile was a killer. Her knees felt all wobbly, and it had nothing to do with the nausea.

      Even after the water, she wasn’t exactly capable of leaving her handy tree and walking away from him just yet, but she knew she had to get away from that amazing smile and out from under his penetrating gaze. How long before he recognized her, especially with her disguise reduced to a bad dye job and no makeup? She sent him a quick glance. What if he already did recognize her and that was the reason he’d stepped in?

      “Thank you so much for your help,” she said as steadily as she could manage, stepping gingerly to the other side of the tree, away from Sir Galahad and his helpful hands. “I’m feeling lots better. Really. And I wouldn’t want to keep you from whatever it is you were up to when you decided to, you know, leap in and rescue me from my coat. Because I’m fine. Really.”

      With the tree between them, she tried to laugh, holding out her free hand, signaling to him that he should return her coat. But he didn’t.

      “I don’t think you’re fine,” he put in. “Actually, I think you should get out of the heat and sit down. In your condition, I mean.”

      She paused, feeling her turbulent tummy take a dive. “My condition?”

      “With the saltines and the nausea, it wasn’t hard to figure out,” he said softly.

      “You’re wrong,” she rushed to assure him. “I mean, you were right the first time. I was overheated in the coat, that’s all. Or maybe it’s a touch of summer flu.”

      “Nice try, but… Listen, this is a little weird, but I noticed you a few days ago and I’ve been, well, keeping an eye on you.” He studied her, wary, alert, way too smart behind those blue eyes. “I think I know who you are and what this is all about.”

      It took a second for his words to reach her. “You know?” Full-fledged panic thumped under her heart, and she turned her whole body in toward the tree. Too late to hide now, especially since Galahad apparently had X-ray vision.

      Oh, lord, lord, lord. Her worst nightmare. Both her worst nightmares. Discovered! Uncovered! Even without the coat, she was so hot she thought she might expire right there in front of him, which would, of course, make it all that much worse because she would be unconscious and unable to defend herself, leaving him free to cart her off to the ER and hit the speed-dial for CNN to tell them that Abra Holloway had just fainted in the middle of Illinois. Pregnant Abra Holloway.

      Concepts like “CNN,” “Abra Holloway” and “pregnant” swirled around her head like bees. And it was all his fault! He was talking again, in that same level, soothing tone, the one that made her think of forest rangers trying to talk wild animals into cages, but she only caught the tail end of it. Not that it mattered. It still didn’t make any sense.

      “It’s understandable,” he offered, “that you’d run away and not want to be noticed, I mean, having a baby under these circumstances.”

      What? What did he know about her circumstances? “Who sent you?” she demanded, moving her hand to her head, refusing to keel over, refusing to fall down and die for one too-smart guy, no matter how spectacular his eyes or his smile. So she went on the offensive while her mind raced with choices. Try to buy him off? Threaten? First she’d better find out what she was dealing with. “Are you a P.I.? Is that it? Did Julian hire you to find me? Or Shelby?”

      He narrowed his eyes. “No.”

      “I didn’t think it would be either of them, but… Okay, then, so you’re a reporter. National Enquirer?”

      “No.” He just kept staring at her, his gaze rapt and intense, as if he could see right under her clothes, all the way to the soul, as if every secret she’d ever had was easy pickings. He held that gaze—and his silence—till she wanted to throttle him. Or herself.

      “Stop staring at me like that. It’s unnerving. And if you don’t tell me who you are right this minute, I’m going to scream for the cops,” she improvised. “You already said you’ve been stalking me.”

      “I wasn’t stalking you.” He brushed that away with one impatient hand, as if the idea of her calling the police was nothing to him. “Listen, my name is Sean Calhoun.” He seemed to be watching her even more closely, to see if that name registered. Not as far as she knew. When she didn’t react, he said again, “I wasn’t stalking you. Just surveilling.”

      “Surveilling isn’t even a word.” So he wasn’t from Julian or Shelby. Not from the Enquirer. Who else could it be? The Post wouldn’t send a reporter this far, would they? And no reporter worth his salt would use a word like “surveilling.”

      Sean Calhoun, whoever he was, waited patiently, just watching her, not bothering to argue about the “surveilling” thing.

      “Just tell me,” she snapped. “Who sent you?”

      “Well, if you must know, my mother,” he said finally.

      Maybe that would’ve made sense under better circumstances. Did he just say his mother? “Are you kidding? Why? Is she a fan?”

      “Uh, no. Definitely not,” he responded with an edge of sarcasm that didn’t add up any more than the rest of it.

      What, he was stalking her because she’d given advice his mom didn’t like on The Shelby Show? “I don’t need this right now,” she told him, pressing one hand into her tummy and waving the other one at him. “I’m sick as a dog, I don’t know who you are, and… And I’m not coping very well!”

      “Okay, okay.” He advanced on her again, holding up his hands—with her baseball cap in one and her coat draped over the other—as if to show he didn’t have a weapon. “I’m not going to hurt you in any way, okay? You need to just calm down.”

      “I hate it when people tell me to calm down!” Abra returned hotly. “Not that anyone ever needed to before this whole mess, because I was always perfectly calm. Not that they need to now, either, for that matter. It’s none of your business whether I’m calm or not!”

      After that outburst, which sounded irrational even to her own ears, he muttered an oath, turned away, and then spun back around, his expression dark and brooding. “Look, I just need to know one thing and then I won’t bother you anymore. The baby…”

      She kept her mouth shut, staring at the ground, refusing to confirm or acknowledge anything.

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