only …
As she remembered the last words that had passed between them, her eyes darted toward the chair where he’d sat down.
It was empty.
A sinking feeling set in and she railed against it. How lame could she have been, asking him to stay with her a little while longer? What in heaven’s name had gotten into her? Nothing had changed—and probably he hadn’t, either. She wanted Adam to go, not stay. So why had she suddenly felt so vulnerable? Why had she asked him to stay with her like a child who was afraid of the dark?
A noise came from the doorway and she glanced over, half hoping—Idiot!
A blonde nurse walked in. She looked as if she was about twenty-two. A young two-twenty at that. The nurse pushed a see-through bassinette before her.
“Someone here wants to see her mommy,” the nurse all but chirped cheerfully.
Eve squinted ever so slightly, reading the nurse’s name tag: Kathy.
As Kathy parked the bassinette at the foot of the bed, she scanned the room. “Your husband stepped out?” she asked.
It took Eve a second to make the connection. “He’s not my husband,” she corrected.
“Oh.” The response seemed to squelch the nurse’s enthusiasm, but just for the barest moment. And then the insuppressible cheerfulness returned. “Well, anyway, he seemed very devoted to you.” Picking the baby up, Kathy made a few soothing noises to the infant and then placed the tiny bundle into Eve’s arms.
Eve hated the fact that she was distracted even the slightest bit, but the nurse’s comment had aroused her curiosity. She patted the baby’s bottom as she asked, “What makes you say that?”
Kathy moved around the room, drawing back the curtains at the window, tucking the blanket in on one side. She seemed as if she needed to be in perpetual motion.
“Well, for one thing, he stayed here most of the night. He was sitting by your bed when I came on my shift this morning,” she added.
Eve saw only one reason for that. “He must’ve fallen asleep.”
But Kathy shook her head, a wistful smile curving the corners of her mouth. “Looked pretty wide-awake to me. Gail said he’d been there all night, just watching you sleep.”
“Gail?”
“The nurse who was on before me.” She smiled down into Brooklyn’s face. Wide-awake, the infant appeared to absorb her surroundings. “The baby looks like him,” Kathy commented. And then she raised her eyes quickly to look at her patient, as if she realized that she’d just tripped over her tongue. “He is the father, right?”
“Yes,” Eve said quietly, gazing at her daughter’s face. A face that had more in common with Adam than with her. “He’s the father.”
A shade under six feet with an almost painfully thin body, Danny Sederholm leaned indolently against the side of the cement steps of the renovated campus library. The renovation had been conducted, in part, thanks to his father and his uncle’s generous contributions. Both were former alumni of the prestigious college, as was his mother. It made coasting easier.
The student’s small, deep-set brown eyes unabashedly looked him over and took renewed assessment as he approached. Adam struggled to keep his contempt and loathing to himself.
“You look like hell. Something wrong?” Sederholm asked, trying to sound high-handed.
The marbles-for-brains twenty-two-year-old was leagues away from the kind of kid he’d been at that age, Adam thought. Circumstances had forced him to be a man early. Sederholm, he judged, would never be one no matter how old he was.
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing I can’t handle,” he told the snide senior, his tone firmly closing the door on any further speculation regarding the situation.
“Do I look worried?” Sederholm challenged. “Hey, as long as it don’t interfere with ‘business,’” he emphasized the word haughtily, “I don’t care if you’re juggling flying monkeys.”
“‘As long as it “don’t” interfere?’” Adam knew he should let the comment slide, but bad grammar always got under his skin, especially when uttered by someone who gave himself airs. “How much did you say your father was paying for your education? Because whatever it is, it’s way too much.”
Sederholm’s face darkened. “Like I don’t have better things to do than go sit in a lousy auditorium with a bunch of competitive geeks.” He puffed up his chest. “I’m making more money now than my old man ever did at my age—or when he graduated.”
Adam knew exactly what tuition was at the school. It was part of his background research. “Then why would you bother registering? The $40K this costs could be better spent.”
Sederholm shrugged, his large, bony shoulders moving carelessly beneath a sweater that would have set him back two months’ pay. “It’s his money and that’s what he wants to do with it.”
Adam saw through the blasé remark. “Can’t figure a way to siphon it off, can you?” he guessed, not bothering to hide his amusement.
“I don’t want to,” the student snapped at him, annoyed. “In case your tiny brain can’t figure it out, an Ivy League college campus is the perfect place to run my enterprise. As an undergraduate student,” he spread his hands out wide, “I fit right in.”
Adam saw a few obstacles to the senior’s “brilliant” plan. “You have to pass a few tests to stay in the game, don’t you?”
Sederholm snorted, more than a little pleased with himself. “I’ve got that covered. There’s this guy who, for the right price, can write an A-plus paper on any subject you throw at him.”
There were always plenty of those around, Adam thought. Even when he was going to school. “What about tests?”
The student’s smile was condescendingly smug. “I’ve got that covered, too.” He lifted his chin, a lofty look in his eyes. “Why all the questions?”
“Just curious.” Because that didn’t seem to satisfy his contact, Adam added, “When I grow up, I want to be just like you,” allowing only a drop of sarcasm to leak through.
Initially, the senior seemed to take the words as a compliment, but the frown that soon unfurled told Adam that the arrogant drug dealer realized he was being ridiculed.
“I can have you wiped off the face of the earth with a snap of my fingers,” Sederholm threatened him haughtily, snapping his fingers to illustrate.
Obviously, the little twerp had probably come close to OD’ing on classic gangster movies, most likely starting with Cagney and Bogart. For two cents, he would have loved to squash the snotty senior like a bug, but he knew bigger things were at stake here than just mollifying his temper—no matter how good it might feel at the time. Like it or not—and he didn’t—he needed this jerk to get hooked up to the head importer whose identity was still unknown to him.
“Before you snap again,” Adam told him, lightly catching hold of Sederholm’s wrist, “I’d
