Her Soldier's Baby
Autor:in
Tara Taylor Quinn
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Chapter One
ELIZA CLUNG TIGHTLY to her husband, Pierce, pressing her body against his, thigh to thigh, chest to chest, her arms around his waist, pulling him in. Charleston International Airport was teeming with comers and goers and waiters that Friday afternoon. Businesspeople arriving home for the weekend, and others, like her, heading out.
Pierce gave her a tight squeeze—more akin to a pat on the head than a desperate hug filled with the emotional angst of having gone through this before, pledging to see each other again and then not.
She savored the contact.
“You’ve got your driver’s license, your boarding pass is on your phone and there will be a car waiting for you in Palm Springs. If your name is not professionally printed on a card, get a cab instead...” He’d started walking the five feet to the security checkpoint line. Once she joined the queue, he’d leave her.
“Remember, don’t make eye contact with men you don’t know, and—”
She shook her head. “I got it, Pierce. I’ve been keeping myself safe for a long time.” Having lived the majority of her adult life alone, she wasn’t worried.
“The world’s changing, Eliza, and California is not Shelby Island. Not everyone you meet is your friend, nor are they all safe for you to bring home.”
She knew that, too. Had a very careful vetting system and security measures in place for the guests she hosted at her successful Shelby Island bed-and-breakfast in an antebellum home just thirty miles down the South Carolina coast from Charleston.
She’d also been doing that alone for the majority of her adult life.
“I promise, I’ll stay alert, babe,” she told her husband—because she knew that these reminders were his way of supporting her choice to go.
“Just watch yourself going to and from the studio. You’re going to be all over national television, and who knows what kind of crackpot could come out of the ozone? You’re a beautiful woman and...”
She wasn’t. At five-five and a hundred thirty-five pounds, she wasn’t as tall and skinny as the California TV beauties. She wasn’t blonde, either. On good days, her brown hair had a bit of a shine to it. Mostly it just fell, all mousy-looking, around her shoulders, wherever gravity took it. But she loved that Pierce found her as good-looking as he had when they’d been an item in high school. Hard to believe that had been nearly eighteen years ago.
They’d reached the end of the line. Which was moving quickly. She stepped to the side to let a family of five pass. Mom, dad and the kids. That would never be her.
She looked up into Pierce’s big blue eyes—the only soft part of her military-trained cop husband—and melted when he met her gaze with all of the depth of his heart. That look...some days it seemed it was all that was left of the sweet, sensitive boy who’d left her just-turned-sixteen self to go off to basic training.
“I love you, babe,” she said.
“I love you, too.”
There. She took a deep breath. Came back to herself.
“I’ll see you in two days,” she told him. A promise. A pledge. A hope.
And a worry.
“Don’t worry about getting your bag when you come back,” he said. “I’ll park and come in.”
She nodded.
He kissed her. Just a peck. She wanted it to be more personal and might have pushed him into it if she hadn’t had a guilty conscience.
And off she went. To join the queue of strangers. To fly across the country to meet more strangers, to appear as one of eight contestants—all strangers—on the nationally syndicated Family Secrets cooking show—and to search for the one stranger who knew her from the inside out.
Literally.
A stranger Pierce Westin knew nothing about.
* * *
FROM A VANTAGE point against the wall, mostly concealed by a pillar, he watched her through security. And for as far as he could see her.
Because Pierce would never get enough of seeing his beautiful wife. It wasn’t just her big brown eyes, soft cheekbones, and lips that set the world on fire that drew him—though he loved all of that, too. No, it was just...her.
And the fact that she was in his life again. Married to him.
Some nights he woke up in a cold sweat and still couldn’t believe that Eliza Maxwell was his wife. He’d lie there, touching her shoulder, looking at her sometimes for more than an hour, to avoid going back to sleep. When he slept, she was, like the rest of his few good childhood memories, completely out of reach.
The fear that rent his gut when she turned a corner and was out of sight would be with him until her return.
And he would work his tail off. Protecting the people of Charleston, paying it forward—so that the law enforcement of Palm Desert protected her.
He might kid himself that he risked his life every day as a kind of penance—to pay for the sins of his past. But deep down he knew better. There was nothing he could do—ever—to make up for what he’d done. No way his soul would ever be out of debt.
As he reached his patrol car, the fear inside him increased. He wasn’t afraid of the job. On the contrary, his time on the streets, looking out for bad guys, taking them on, taking them in, was the only time he ever really felt comfortable.
What he feared was greater than mere physical death. It was the fear of a man who knew that he wasn’t good enough for the woman he loved.
Who knew that...someday...he would lose her. Again.
* * *
THERE WAS A little gathering for contestants Friday evening down in the lounge. Hosted by the hotel, there’d be wine and hors d’oeuvres, and a chance for all of them to get to know each other before traveling in the van to the studio the next morning. According to Eliza’s paperwork, seven of the eight contestants were traveling in from out of state and would be guests at the hotel.
The eighth, an eighty-one-year-old woman from Utah, had rented a condominium for the next two months in one of the popular senior resort communities for which Palm Desert was known. They’d all had a list of area options. For those who were going to be traveling back and forth for the weekend tapings, the host hotel was by far the best deal.
Eliza would have stayed with the crowd anyway. There was safety in numbers. And convenience in door-to-door transportation.
She took the car she and Pierce had arranged from the airport to the hotel. Paid the driver. Checked in. She was a couple of hours earlier than the three other contestants arriving that day. Three had arrived the night before.
Eliza could have made plans to get together early with them. Could go downstairs on the off chance she’d run into them.
Instead, she grabbed the big black shoulder bag she’d bought to use as a purse for the duration of her time on Family Secrets—a minimum of two weeks, a maximum of six—and made sure the folder was inside.
She opened that and looked for the pencil markings she’d made. Just a couple of numbers. A mnemonic device. She didn’t need it. The information she needed was etched so legibly on her brain, she was half surprised that Pierce hadn’t been able to read it in full.
After his time in Iraq, coupled with his police military training and his time on the job after he got out, her husband could see an ant on a paper plate at a picnic from a block away. His “sniffing out trouble” skills were honed to perfection.
The agency she needed to visit was in Anaheim. A good hour and a half west of Palm Desert. She already knew she could get a rental car from the hotel, and as soon as she’d dropped off her suitcase and quickly freshened up, she went down to the lobby to do so.
She didn’t need to look her best. She was going only to the agency. To see if she could get some information.
In deference to the questions she knew her husband was going to ask, she got a car with built-in navigation. And called him as soon as she was inside. Telling him that she’d only rented the car for the afternoon. She had some free time and didn’t want to be cooped up in a hotel when she was in sunny California for the first time in her life.
Pierce didn’t like her out and about on her own. At all.
But he didn’t question her desire to take a look around. He never questioned anything she did. Trusted her completely.
Which made the start of this particular journey that much more difficult.
Pierce didn’t trust often, or easily, but he’d always been able to trust her. Since the moment he’d come back into her life, she’d never given him reason to doubt her.
He’d needed that.
And she’d somehow worked it out in her brain that if she did that for him, she could make up for the part of her past that he didn’t know about. Make up for the one secret she kept. The one part of her life he wouldn’t recognize.
The part after he’d left for the army, and she’d left town—and the high school where they’d met and been a couple—to finish high school in South Carolina. Living with her grandmother.
The licensed nonprofit agency was located in a suite of offices in an upscale professional park. Following the instructions coming over the car’s system, she drove straight there. Parked. Stared at the door. This was a long shot. At best.
At three o’clock on Friday afternoon, the employees inside were probably winding down for the week. She knew from their website that they closed at five p.m., five days a week. And were closed all weekend, too.
A couple came out. His arm around her, his head slightly bent toward hers. They appeared to be in their midthirties, well dressed. Got into a royal blue BMW.
And she hadn’t come all this way to watch other people live their lives. Truth be told, she hadn’t come all this way to compete on a cooking show, either.
She’d auditioned for the show as a means to come all this way. If she hadn’t won the audition, she’d told herself she’d see that as a sign that she was to do nothing.
Likewise, if she got on the show, that was momentous enough to be considered a sign in the other way—it would be sure direction to act.
The fact that winning Family Secrets could allow her and Pierce the finances to get him off the streets was added impetus.
She’d been motivated by need and had been given opportunity, and now it was up to her to do all she could to make their future come to fruition.
And added to all of that, the unforeseen aspect... She really needed to win the competition for herself. Needed it badly. These past weeks of living in her future while knowing she was going back into her past had shown her something very clearly. Her whole life she’d defined herself by those in her life—her parents, Pierce, her grandmother and then Pierce again. And she was...weary. It was like she was constantly running to keep up, but never quite catching up because someone always needed something more.
But winning the competition...that was for her. To show herself that separate and apart from everyone else, she was just plain good at something. She was an individual with a talent that had nothing to do with anyone else in her life.
Maybe if she could believe that, if she could show herself that much, she wouldn’t constantly feel as though she had to earn the love of those around her. She could just love them. Serve them. And feel...like she was enough.
But first, she had to take care of her past.
