Page 29 of SEAL’S Baby Surprise (Lanes #2)

AUSTIN

It has been a long time since I last spent any time with Richard. We had been college suite mates, and best friends back in college. So let me tell you about college dorm suites — or, at least, about ours.

There had been eight of us, in four bedrooms grouped around a common room and a bathroom. Yeah, that’s right: eight guys to share one bathroom.

Sounds barbaric, doesn’t it? Actually, it was mostly all right because we’d had different schedules.

It could get a little wild on Friday or Saturday nights when everyone wanted to go out, but most of the time the shared bathroom was not a problem.

I am glad for Richard. He’d been all right as a roommate. He’d been deeply absorbed in sports, which was not too surprising given that he was pretty much an all-star player for college sports.

He’d been focused back then — all about making the team, meeting with the team, practicing for the team…just about everything was “for the team,” except for helping out with the family business.

Then he’d become a shark, a toothy predator swimming in financial waters. He hadn’t seemed to give a fig for anything beyond the scores his team made or the dollar signs in his portfolio.

It is my good luck that he considers me to be “family” even through the years where we were out of touch. A small investment account I’d had with him had been my saving grace when I came home to the mess Izzy had made out of our lives.

His football injury had happened after I’d gone into the Navy. I hadn’t heard about it until we’d run across each other at a class reunion.

Then he was all about being a playboy, getting the girls, while chasing the almighty dollar. Richie had never had too much trouble getting a girl — any girl.

It is a treat to see just how “whipped” his current female catch has him. He watches her with adoration when she isn’t looking. When she is looking, he teases and pesters her until her eyes flash with irritation.

But when he turns away, she looks at him with adoration as deep and tender as his own.

It is disgusting and adorable all at the same time. I realize I wouldn’t mind at all if Lee looked at me the way Kandy looks at Richie. “Cute couple” doen’t even begin to cover it.

In spite of his injuries, Richard is just as handsome as ever. Now that he is settling into his role as husband and father, he has a few gray hairs at his temples, just a hint at what kind of “silver fox” he will be one of these days.

Kandis is lovely in her own right, a true California girl. More than that, she is an accomplished hostess, managing her son, her husband, and an all-American sit-down meal without missing a beat.

“Have you heard anything about Rylie?” she asks Richard, keeping her voice light, but there is a thread of tension underlying the inquiry.

He shakes his head. “Nothing since the report that someone was trying to sell her jewelry. Whoever it was hasn’t tried again.

We got it out of the girlfriend who was with her at the fitting that she and that idiot had some kind of fight.

The girlfriend went to the bathroom, and when she got back, there was the train off Rylie’s dress on the floor, and Rylie was gone.

It was as if she’d shed it like a lizard’s tail and scuttled away.

She didn’t take her purse, her make-up kit, or anything. ”

“And you’ve not heard from her again?” I ask. “That’s insanely scary, man.”

“Don’t I know it,” Richard replies, scowling. “And that SOB she was going to marry. I can’t begin to say how much I detest him, or how little I trust him.”

“Isn’t that sort of the function of an older brother who is also his sister’s guardian?” I tease.

I remember that Richard used to grumble about his sister having run away from yet another boarding school and having to go fetch her back.

“I guess,” Richard says. “But I’m really worried about her. I’ve got detectives out looking for her. No one has seen her, no one has heard from her. I’ve asked all her friends, her acquaintances, and even her employees and customers. It’s like she just walked away from everything.”

I think about this for a minute, while I watch Julia playing with Charlie, Richard and Kandy’s two-year-old son.

How would I feel if Julia just suddenly disappeared out of my life? I don’t have to use much imagination. I’d had a hard time finding her.

“How can I help?” I ask.

“Say, you live down there on that beach, don’t you?” Richard asks.

“I do,” I reply cautiously. “I’ve got a van I’ve set up to live in while Julia and I look for the perfect place to make a home.”

Richard looks at me shrewdly. “Are you sure the van isn’t home? I don’t recall you ever being all that long on money.”

I shrug. I like Richard, and I’m grateful for the leg up he gave me. But I’ve learned the hard way to keep my financials private.

“I’ve got my disability pay, and I can go back to school if I want. We’ve got groceries, food, and good neighbors. We’re doing all right.”

I watch Julia as she sings, “Itsy, Bitsy Spider” for Charlie, making him giggle and crow when the spider washes out and climbs up the spout again.

“You let me know if you need anything,” Richard says. “Anything at all. I’d never have made it through business math, let alone calculus without your help. Or survived all the jealous boyfriends and angry fathers. You’d make a good teacher, Austin.”

No. No, I wouldn’t, I think, remembering leading cadence for new recruits. Never again. I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s life except maybe Julia’s.

I remember a man sobbing with the pain in his legs. Hardly more than a boy, really. And he’d been there because he’d been one of my students during combat training.

No. Never again.

Kandis must have picked up on my mood because she says brightly, “I finished putting together that photo album with all Charlie’s baby pictures. Would you like to look at it?”

“Sure,” I say. Charlie is a cute kid. That should be a safe topic, especially since he’s hit it off with Julia.

Kandis gets out a hand-tooled leather book and places it on the coffee table. I begin leafing through it.

There are the usual kinds of pictures. There’s Kandis, her body round with pregnancy, posing on an ocean-side lounge.

There’s the usual embarrassing picture of a newborn, upside down in all his naked glory, still attached to the umbilical.

This is followed up by a cute picture of Kandis in a frilly bed jacket, holding a cleaned up, clothed baby.

I turn the page. And staring up at me, baby Charlie in the crook of her arm, is Lee. “That’s Lee!” I blurt out. “While she still had pink hair.”

“What!” Richard and Kandis chorus. Richard bolts up off his seat and starts for me. I think he might have attacked me, but Kandis grabs him by his belt loops, and holds him back.

Chills run down my spine. How can this be? “She’s been living with me since late spring. I found her on the beach, wearing some kind of fancy dress and talking nonsense.”

“Where’s Lee?” Julia wants to know. “I want to see.”

I turn the album so Julia can see. My little girl frowns at the picture. “I didn’t know she had a baby. Why is she holding a baby?”

“She’s holding my baby,” Kandis explains. “that’s Charlie when he was just little.”

“But why did you make her so scared she runned away?” Julia asks. “Cause Lee’s scared lots of times, specially if Daddy is in town or out on his paddle-board. Sometimes, it’s so bad she hides in her bed, and sometimes she holds onto Ark and cries.”

Richard’s face is screwed up in an expression that is somewhere between grief and rage. I glance at him with worry. I had loved Richard better than my estranged brother.

He’d been my roomie for three years, and we’d embraced the college experience together – with both good and bad results.

We’d drifted apart, taking different paths as adults, and we’d not always been amicable. I am aware that only Kandy’s hold on his belt loops is keeping him from cutting loose on me.

“I knew I should have followed up on that pearl. I knew it! She was that close all this time?”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Judy-Rudy?” I ask.

“Cause she didn’t want me to,” Julia says.

“Did she tell you that?” I ask.

Julia shakes her head. “She didn’t have to. I just knew. She wanted you to think she was brave and strong. Most days, she is. But sometimes, she wears her wig, and a scarf, and those big sunglasses you got for her, and even that funny muumuu because she says it makes her look like a gra’ma.”

I look up at Richard and take the chance that he won’t kill me for asking. “It’s a fair question. Why is she so scared? You could be an ass when we were in college, but I never thought you’d be mean to your sister.”

“I’m not,” Richard protests, going on the defensive. “I mean, I wouldn’t. It’s that asshat she was going to marry; I’ll lay money on it. He’s been wailing and howling about how she’s gone; she’s been kidnapped. If she’s running scared, I bet it’s from him.”

“Where is she now?” Kandis asks. “Why didn’t she come with you?”

“She wasn’t feeling well, and wanted to stay home,” I say.

“She knew we were coming here,” Julia said. “I’m pretty sure of it.”

“There’s one way to find out all that,” I say grimly. “Let’s go ask her.”

“Absolutely,” Richard says. “We can take the wagon and bring her back here. If that asshole is threatening her, I can keep her safe.”

I refrain from saying that Ark and I have kept her safe for the last three months, and that I had kept her from drowning herself.

I would have felt vindicated by pointing it out, but if history was any indication, it would just catapult Richard into doing something stupid and possibly dangerous.

“Can I stay and play with the baby?” Julia asks. “I like Charlie.”

I’m torn for a minute. I want to go check on Lee, but I don’t want to leave my daughter. At the same time, if there is something going on between Richard and his sister, I don’t want Julia in the crossfire. Richard isn’t exactly safe company at the moment.

“She’ll be fine here with me,” Kandis says. “Richard hasn’t gone on any child killing sprees since I’ve met him. If he looks like he’s planning one, the kids and I can go to my grandparents’ house.”

I give the joke the nervous chuckle it deserves, and say, “All right, Julia. But you mind, you hear?”

“Every good thing she tells me,” Julia says. “And I bet she says mostly good things.”

It’s the same thing Julia says when she goes to visit the Turners, so I relax a little.

“All right,” I say. “All right. Let’s go ask her.”

Because it is getting late, and Richard doesn’t want to step into something and throw his back out, we take their jeep. Richard parks it near the path to the van.

When I approach it, the van is strangely silent. My heart plummets. Ark should be running out to greet me.

Lee almost always has the television or one of her audio books going. I break into a run, not waiting for Richard.

The door to the van is unlocked. I open it and flip the lights on. No one is in it, I can tell. It has that deathly silence of a house that is missing its most vital component: the people.

Just in case, I look in the bathroom, my bedroom, and finally in Lee’s little closet.

A sheet of paper is on her pillow. It has some words scrawled on it. The ink has run a little for what looks like wet splotches. Lee had been crying.

The note reads, “I’m pregnant. I think I’m pregnant. I’ve gone to the family clinic to ask for help. Mrs. Hubbard gave me their card. I’m sorry. I think I’ve messed up again. I love you and Julia and Ark. I won’t mess your lives up with my mess. My messy mess.”

XOXO

Lee”

“Oh, my God!” I burst out. “Lee!”

Richard sticks his head around the corner. “What the hell, Austin?”

I thrust the note at him, push him into the bathroom — which is the only place he can go to get out of my way — and hurry past him to where our bicycles are chained up. Where they are supposed to be chained up.

Richard comes boiling out of the trailer, and would probably have gone for me, but he trips over the dog bowl in the walkway and falls heavily against the van.

It’s a reminder that he isn’t the man he was when we were in college, and that he’d spent several months in intensive care thanks to a football injury.

I don’t have the emotional time or energy to pay attention to my friend. Lee’s bike is gone. It is nearly dark, and her bike doesn’t have lights on it.

It’s miles to the city where the family clinic is located. She’s not a strong rider. She could take a tumble. She hasn’t even recovered from the last one. The newsies could be after her.

She could be in a ditch somewhere!

I must have made a noise. Something that was somewhere between a sob and a shout.

Richard comes up behind me, looking at the two bikes chained up where there were spaces for three. The fall must have given him a chance to collect himself, or maybe my obvious distress gets to him.

“Now you know how I feel,” he says. “Unless she left right after you did, she can’t have gotten far. Let’s go see if we can track her down.”

“Ark’s with her,” I say. “That should make it easy to ask which way they went. Girl on a bike with a big dog — pretty easy to remember.”

“Ark?” Richard asks, blankly.

“My dog. He’s combat trained, and I told him ‘guard’ and ‘protect’ before I left. So she should be safe until we can get to her.”

He nods. “Come on, then,” he says. “Let’s get looking.”