do this, Vincente.” She handed him his coffee and took her own to the table, grimacing as she viewed the paperwork that she still hadn’t touched. If she pulled another all-nighter, she might just meet the deadline.
“Do what?” He came to sit opposite her.
“I know these tactics. This is where you soften me up before you go for the kill.” She took a deep breath. “I know how angry you are. Just say what you have to say.”
He didn’t speak for a moment or two and she took in the tight set of his jaw, the glitter in the dark depths of his eyes and the way his clenched fist rested on his muscled thigh. “You think angry comes close to describing what I’m feeling right now? I’m so far beyond that it’s not true. But I want to understand why you cheated me out of almost a year of Lia’s life. I’m trying to contain my feelings so we can have some sort of rational dialogue for the sake of that little girl upstairs, and because I’m concerned about you—”
“Oh, no.” Beth sprang to her feet. “I see where this is going. You think you can walk in here and pull a stunt like that?”
“What the hell are you talking about? What stunt?” Vincente looked up at her, his expression bemused.
“Get some rest, Beth. Let me do this for you, Beth. For old times’ sake?” Her voice quivered as she mimicked his concerned tone. “What will you tell the judge when you try to take my daughter away? You turned up here and found I was incapable of looking after her? Depressed? Unstable? An unfit mother?”
Vincente got to his feet, facing her across the width of the table. “Is that what you think?” His voice was harsh. “That I’ve changed so much I would do that to you?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that losing her...it’s my worst nightmare.” He didn’t know—couldn’t know—what she’d been through. The debilitating anxiety and isolation of post-partum depression was something she still found hard to come to terms with, even now she was over the worst of it. At times like this, when she felt under pressure, some of the symptoms resurfaced. She no longer needed medication, but she did occasionally keep in touch with her counselor. Right now, she focused on regulating her breathing. It was one of the techniques she had learned for coping with stress.
“Beth, no matter what I’m feeling, I would never try to take Lia from you.”
Beth knew Vincente well enough to sense when she could trust him. He couldn’t be trusted to turn up on time to a date. She couldn’t trust him to remember birthdays and anniversaries. No matter how many times she told him, trusting him to remember that she hated anchovies on her pizza never worked. But when it came to the big things? She knew he would never lie to her. This was one of those times. There was nothing but truth in those dark eyes.
“I still want an answer to my question. Why did you leave Stillwater without telling me you were pregnant?”
She took her seat again, making an effort to relax the tension in her limbs. Following her lead, Vincente sat down, as well. How could she tell this story without telling him all of it? Vincente wasn’t a fool. He was the smartest person she knew. Not only was he the most quick-witted, well-read, articulate person to have made her acquaintance, but he was also the most perceptive. And where Beth was concerned, he was incredibly intuitive. He had always been able to tell when she was lying.
“It wasn’t like that.” She took a sip of her coffee, buying a little time. “I didn’t know I was expecting a baby when I left Stillwater.”
“Math is my job, Beth. I’ve already done the calculations. Lia is eleven months old. That means you must have been four months pregnant when you ran away—” she nodded in confirmation “—yet you didn’t know?” His voice said it all. She hadn’t been some kid who didn’t know her own body. She had been a twenty-seven-year-old attorney with a promising career.
“I had a lot on my mind.” God, those words sounded so lame. But it was true. The newspaper report had arrived two months before she left Stillwater. She hadn’t known that Lia had already been growing inside her, hadn’t noticed the missed periods and the changes in her body. Her whole focus had been on the nagging worry at the back of her mind. The worry that had ratcheted up to a whole new level a month later with the arrival of the letter and the first photograph. By the time the next one turned up in her mailbox a week before she left Stillwater, she had been half-crazy with worry. Any physical symptoms her body had been displaying had come second to the turmoil of her emotions.
Receiving anonymous threats had been bad enough. When those warnings became directed at anyone close to her, she had panicked. Because there was only one person close to her. Whether he liked it or not, Vincente had been the one who meant the most to her. Even though it had broken her heart to leave, even though missing him had been a constant ache ever since, it had seemed like the only way she could protect him.
Now he was here, and she couldn’t tell him the truth. I’ll come after the ones you love... Even the thought of those words made her shiver.
Vincente frowned. Clearly, he wasn’t buying her explanation. Beth didn’t blame him. She wouldn’t herself if she was the one listening to it. A lot on my mind. It was a classic fobbing-off phrase. His lips parted in preparation to ask more just as a cry from the baby monitor, for the second time that day, provided an interruption.
This cry was different. This wasn’t one of Lia’s usual noises. It was a high-pitched scream that brought Beth straight to her feet and had her running for the door. At the same time, out in the yard, Melon went into a frenzy of barking.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Picking up on her panic, Vincente was right behind her as she dashed up the stairs.
“Someone is in Lia’s room.”
Vincente got all the confirmation he needed about Beth’s state of mind when she hurtled from the kitchen and charged up the stairs. “Someone is in Lia’s room? What the hell do you mean?” How had she reached that conclusion from the noise she had heard Lia make through the baby monitor?
Beth didn’t answer. He could hear her breath catching in her throat in a series of gasps as she reached the top of the stairs and burst through a door to her left. To Vincente’s relief, Lia was lying on her side in her crib with a pink-and-white blanket pulled up to her chin. Her long lashes shadowed her cheeks and her breathing was rhythmic.
Beth made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a sob. She raised a hand to her lips, but it was shaking so wildly she couldn’t complete the action and she lowered it back to her side. When she turned to look at Vincente, her eyes were urgent and haunted, their blue depths awash with unshed tears.
“Beth—” just what was going on with her? “—she’s fine. No one has been in here.”
The tears spilled over as she blinked, and she brushed them impatiently away with the back of her hand. “She cried out as if someone had touched her.” He could see doubt creeping in now as she turned back to look at Lia. “That’s how she cries when a stranger tries to hold her.”
She shivered slightly as if a chill had caught her unawares. Turning slowly, she looked at the open window. “No. I closed that when I brought her up here. I know I did.”
“Maybe you forgot. It’s
