Maybe Baby Lite (58 page)

“
Tylar,” Clive said, “we
want and support whatever Trey and you desire. That’s all we want
you to know. We consider you family. We hope you’ll come to feel
the same way about us.”

What wonderful parents, I
thought. I felt a fleeting pain that I'd never known that kind of
unconditional love. Trey’s arm was around me now, pulling me toward
him, kissing my cheeks, once again wiping my tears away.

Susan was ecstatic that
we'd somehow dealt with the elephant in the room. I was too.
Suddenly I was famished, digging in to my breakfast, and feeling
that everything would be okay.

“
Tylar, what is your due
date?” she asked excitedly.

“
May
5
^th
,”
I replied, “Kentucky Derby month.”

“
Oh that's so thrilling,”
she exclaimed, all bubbly and excited. “Do you know if the baby is
a boy or a girl, not that we have a preference. We're just tickled
to death for a grandbaby!”

“
Not yet,” I replied. “My
doctor will do an ultrasound at my next appointment, which is at
the end of next week. I’m not sure if I want to know or not. I kind
of like the idea of being surprised.”

Trey looked at me
seriously, “Why didn’t I know about the ultrasound, Tylar?” Uh-oh,
I should have mentioned it to him before now.

“
I’m sorry, babe,” I said
softly, patting his cheek gently with my hand, making sure I
sounded contrite in his parents presence, “can you come to the
appointment with me next week in Radcliff?”

“
Certainly,” he smiled,
sipping his coffee, “in fact, I’ve rearranged my schedule to spend
time with you in Radcliff until Christmas if necessary.”

What? Really?

I was speechless. I loved
that Trey would do this for me but I was a bit disappointed that I
had to hear it from him just now. Why hadn’t he told me earlier?
I'd have been so thrilled. I then realized that Trey had the power
to call his own shots at the firm. He was a senior partner after
all.

“
Well, then I'm tickled
pink,” Susan gushed. “Clive and I feel so much better knowing that
you two have worked out so many of the details! Tell me Tylar,” she
asked, “now I know that it’s early and all, but have you and Trey
discussed names for the baby?”

“
Well,” I said softly,
lowering my head a bit, looking at Trey in my peripheral vision as
he was preparing to take another sip of his coffee, “I haven’t
mentioned it to Trey just yet but I was thinking if it’s a boy,
‘Jack’, and if it’s a girl, I like ‘Danielle.’” I could see Trey
choking on his last sip of the hot coffee. I pretended not to
notice. “What do you think, babe?” I asked, turning to
him.

He glanced at me while
pulling his cloth napkin from his lap and wiping his mouth. He gave
me one of his “your-ass-is-mine” looks, which I thoroughly
enjoyed.

“
We’ll talk about names
later,” he replied authoritatively.

The rest of our breakfast
was enjoyed in good spirits. Afterward, I went back upstairs to
retrieve my hoodie. I wanted to go out to the stable to visit with
Derringer. Trey was right behind me.

“
That was quite a
performance you gave down there,” he said wryly.

“
Trey, I meant all of it.
Well, with the exception of the baby names.”

“
I should hope so,” he
replied, smirking.

“
Did you really plan to
stay with me or was that something you made up?” I
asked.

He was thoughtful for a
moment, choosing his words carefully. “Tylar, I’ve made
arrangements to stay with you until the Christmas holiday break
with my firm. I’ve several reasons for doing so. Please trust me
when I tell you this and don't get pissed off and stubborn. Will
you do that?”

I knew that Trey was
serious and meant what he wanted to tell me. “Yes, of course Trey,”
I answered.

He pulled me down so that
I was sitting next to him on the bed. He was momentarily quiet,
selecting his words carefully. “There’s a very good chance that the
C.A. will accept Charlie Roberts’s plea bargain for giving us your
mother.”

I wasn’t quite sure what
that meant.

“
If that happens, you
won’t have to face being at his trial; he will simply plead guilty
to a lesser charge. Now, I don’t want you to worry about that.
Charlie will do time in prison, just not as much. My only concern
is that the authorities haven't+ found your mother. I’ve had my own
private investigator looking into her whereabouts as
well.”

“
You have?” I asked
wide-eyed. Maybe that explained his constant phone
calls.

“
Your mother's been living
in Indiana.”

“
Indiana? Why would she
move to Indiana?” Then it hit me—Daniel. Trey saw that I
understood.

“
Yes,” he said, “she’s
been with Daniel.”

“
Oh wow,” I said, although
nothing about mom would shock me.

“
He’s in college. He’s at
Purdue.”

“
Unfortunately he’s not
any more, Tylar. For whatever reason, he was obsessed with your
mother. It’s been going on for quite some time.”

Since my fucking senior
prom!

“
Your mom’s expecting his
child. He quit school and has been working at a factory. Somehow
she figured out that we were on to her after Charlie’s assault
attempt went awry. By the way, the attack wasn’t actually part of
their plan if it makes you feel any better.”

It didn’t. I pressed Trey
for more details.

“
According to Charlie’s
sworn statement, the plan was to make it look like an
accident.”

“
Make what look like an
accident?” I questioned. Trey shifted nervously beside me, wrapping
an arm around me. His silence spoke volumes. “What? She wanted me
dead?” I looked up at Trey and I knew the answer though he couldn’t
speak the unspeakable.

What made her hate me so
much?

I buried my face into his
chest and sobbed inconsolably. When I finally raised my head, I'd
drenched his shirt. Wiping my wet cheeks with the back of my hand,
I raised my eyes to his.

“
Why Trey?” I sobbed. “Why
would she hate me like that?”

“
I don’t know, Tylar,” he
said, stroking my face with the back of his knuckles. “I don’t
understand it either.” He kissed the top of my head. He continued
in his smooth silky voice.

“
Charlie was biding his
time, hoping to get an opportunity to catch you alone, either in
the stable or your cottage. The plan was to make it appear as
though you'd had an accident with one of the horses. He thought he
had a perfect opportunity the night he saw you going into the
stable alone. He didn’t realize that I was there. When he saw us,
he decided to cash in on a better opportunity.”

The video recorded session
of Trey and me in the stable; the night our baby was
conceived.

“
So, explain this,” I
interrupted, “was the plan to kill me nixed then in favor of
getting blackmail money from the video?”

“
That’s the story Charlie
is sticking to,” Trey replied. “Your mother had a life insurance
policy on you for $150,000. She offered Charlie $50,000 of it to
arrange the…accident. Charlie saw an opportunity for more money by
blackmailing me. He claimed your mother was still hounding him to
complete the other…task. She wanted the $100,000 life insurance
money on top of her portion of the blackmail money. Also, if you
were gone, the house in Radcliff would go to her as natural
next-of-kin.”

“
But the jig's up, right?
She couldn’t collect on insurance now if I died under strange
circumstances, could she?”

“
That depends,” Trey said,
“unless she’s well connected within the law enforcement community
here, she may not know that Charlie sang like a bird.”

“
But maybe she still has
connections,” I was thinking out loud. “I mean, she did work for a
law firm. It’s possible, I suppose.”

“
Either way, I don’t want
you to be alone in Radcliff; I want to keep you safe. There’s an
outstanding warrant for her.”

“
What good does a warrant
do if they aren’t actively searching for her?”

“
First of all, I have a
private detective looking for her; secondly, if she gets stopped by
law enforcement for a minor traffic ticket, they’ll run her I.D.
and see that she has an outstanding warrant in
Virginia.”

I knew my mother, or at
least I thought I did. She had a keen survival instinct. She wasn’t
going to be caught easily. “Does Daniel know any of
this?”

“
No,” Trey explained, “the
last thing we want is to tip her off. For some reason though, she’s
not been with him over the past several weeks.”

Nausea began to creep over
me. My life had been a mess of lies and half-truths at best. The
only parent that I knew was a con artist and wannabe murderer. Trey
held my hand.

“
Tylar, please consider
something for me.” He lifted my chin so that our eyes were locked.
I nodded. “You don’t need to make a decision now, but please
consider giving up your house and job in Radcliff and moving here
before Christmas.”

“
But Trey, you’re not
here. What’s the point?”

“
You won’t come to Atlanta
with me. At least here you’d be closer, and my mother is dying to
look after you.”

“
It’s not that I don’t
want to be with you in Atlanta. It’s just that I’d have nothing to
do. I need to be doing something, Trey. I need to nest and prepare
for this baby.”

“
I totally understand
that, Tylar. Please consider making your nest either here or
Atlanta, for me?” He raised my hand to his lips, never taking his
sapphire blue eyes off of me.

How could I deny him
anything?

“
I will, Trey. I promise.
It’ll be one or the other.”

“
Good girl,” he smiled,
his dimple appearing. “Now how about you and I going for a very
gentle ride
together
on Derringer?”

“
Really?”

“
Yep,” he answered, “I’m
driving, though.”

Trey and I spent the
afternoon in the brisk November sunshine. We rode Derringer down
through the woods, stopping to sit and talk. We discussed what
needed to happen when we returned to Kentucky the following day. I
wanted to make sure that I gave at least a week’s notice so that
another temp could be located. I actually didn’t mind putting the
house on the market. No matter what, there would always be dark
memories there.

We sat astride a log; Trey
sat behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. He leaned in to
kiss the back of my neck. I shivered with pleasure.

“
You’re giving me goose
bumps Mr. Sinclair,” I said, trying my best southern
drawl.

“
Is that a bad thing, Ms.
Preston?”

“
Not when they’re from
you,” I snuggled closer to him. My hands closed over his hands that
were resting on my belly. We both felt the baby at the same time,
stronger than before.

“
I think he’s happy when
we’re happy,” I said giggling.

“
So it’s a ‘he’ is it,
Tylar?” Trey whispered against my neck.

“
I’m kind of hoping we
have a boy,” I admitted, “for you.”

“
Why for me?” Trey asked.
I could tell he was frowning.

“
I thought all men wanted
sons, you know, to hang out with, to follow in their footsteps,
that sort of thing.”

Trey snorted, “I’ve always
had the impression that sons were closer to their mothers;
daughters to their fathers.”

“
I guess I wouldn’t know
about that,” I replied, shrugging.

“
Be patient, Tylar. We may
unravel the mystery of you yet.”

“
Very nicely put,
counselor,” I said, raising my hand to stroke his dimpled chin
behind me. “Boy or girl, I want our baby to have this
dimple.”

“
You do, huh?” he
whispered and kissed the back of my neck.

“
What about you? Do you
have a preference?”

“
It makes no difference to
me sweetie,” he said, nuzzling his face into my neck. “As long as
we agree that he or she isn’t going to be an only
child.”

I smiled at that. It was a
perfect thing for him to say.

“
Aside from Jack and
Danielle, do you have any
other
names in mind for our child?”

I did have some names in
mind, and I wanted to see Trey’s reaction when I told him. I turned
around on the log to face him. I noticed his crotch was bulging. My
eyes met his amused gaze.

“
Really, Trey?”

“
Oh come on, Tylar,” he
laughed good-naturedly, “You’ve fucked my brains out the whole time
we’ve been here. I'm spoiled now."

“
Just so I’m the only one
that gets to spoil you; it’s mine remember?”

“
Of course,” he said,
leaning forward and kissing the tip of my nose playfully, “now tell
me the names you’ve picked out.”