about…what was it? Boys and their toys, he remembered. In response, he’d snapped a quick photo of her. She’d protested, grabbed the phone away, and distracted him with a kiss.
It had been another hour before they’d set off.
Ally.
He didn’t need to look behind him at the bulletin board on the wall to know that Ally’s note with her name and phone number scribbled on the back was still there. A hundred bucks slipped to the desk clerk had gotten her contact info from the computer, but after the initial shock and anger at her abrupt departure had abated—and the struggle to get the Circe home in one piece had helped distract him nicely—he’d never followed up on his knee-jerk reaction to want to find her.
He’d put her from his mind, if not his dreams, and gone back to his life, even if the blithe way she’d dismissed him had left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Mickey had taken his life in his hands once to tease him about it—shortly after he’d returned to the Circe instead of sailing off with Ally on the Siren—telling him it was a fair turnaround considering his own love-’em-and-leave-’em past. That was the closest he’d ever come to hitting a crewmate.
He wasn’t sure why he’d even kept her note and number, much less pinned it on the board with the photos of him and his crew in various races over the years.
“Chris?” Marge, Pops’s secretary, stuck her head around his office door. “I brought you a sandwich.”
After thirty years with the company, Marge was more family than employee, and she’d mothered Chris shamelessly since day one. She was well past retirement age, but had said the place would fall apart without her and claimed they’d have to carry her out of there in a box. He and Pops certainly weren’t arguing with her or forcing her out of the door.
Crossing to Chris’s desk, she laid the sandwich on the blotter and ruffled his hair. “Jack said you two had a disagreement about the Circe.”
The sandwich smelled delicious, and his stomach growled at the reminder he’d skipped lunch when the keel had distracted him. “Jack always comes running to you, the tattletale. She’s not his boat.”
“And I’m sure you’re right about the keel. Just don’t forget to eat. Who’s she?” Marge was peering at the picture of Ally, still open on his desktop.
“Just someone I met on Tortola.” He closed the picture.
“And you took her sailing? You never take anyone sailing. She must’ve been some girl.”With a confidence not every employee would have, Marge clicked the photo open again and studied it carefully. “She’s pretty, but not what I’d call your usual type.”
He closed it again and unwrapped the sandwich. His favorite. Marge was too good to him. “Well, Ally was an aberration.”
One of Marge’s penciled eyebrows went up. “Ally is it? Ally of the mystery phone number, perhaps?”
He nearly choked on the large bite of roast beef but managed to swallow it painfully instead. “Is there anything you don’t know?”
“It’s right there.” Marge pointed. “It’s not like I had to go looking or anything. Eat.”
Dutifully, he took another bite.
“That’s a Savannah area code. Have you called her?”
Oh, good Lord. “No. And I doubt I will. Too much going on.”
“Piffle.” Marge waved the excuse away. “You just don’t want to. I hope the poor girl isn’t pining away waiting for your call.”
“I doubt it.” She would have had to have left a phone number.
With a shrug, Marge walked back to the door. “That’s a pity. Oh, and your grandfather wants an update on Dagny when you have a minute.”
No, Pops wanted to try to talk him out of it again. Finding fault with the Dagny’s progress was only his newest tactic.
Once Marge left, Chris ate and debated with himself as he stared at the icon on the desktop that would open Ally’s picture if he clicked on it again.
What the hell. He probably should have called her already, just to be sure that her brother was okay. It would have been the right thing to do, after all.
He closed his office door, then dialed.
“AMI Accounting Services. This is Molly.”
A business? Did he even have the right number? “I’m looking for Ally Smith.”
“She’s, um, away from her desk at the moment. Can I take a message?”
This was actually good. He’d salve his conscience and avoid further meddling from Marge by putting the ball in Ally’s court. He’d called. Done his part. “Sure. This is Chris—”
“The contractor?” Molly interrupted, but didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Great. Ally said you’d be calling. Actually, I can give you the information since she’s busy.”
“I’ll just—” he started again, only to be interrupted with another torrent of words.
“We just need an estimate right now, but we don’t need to start work right away. We’ve got until March to get it ready, after all.” Molly laughed, but then hurried on before he could say anything. “We need to finish out the storeroom into an office for Ally—did she mention the lighting? She’ll need to be able to darken the back half of the room where the crib will go. She doesn’t think it will be a problem, but I think we should go ahead and have the electrics for that done while y’all are finishing out the walls. Don’t you agree?”
One word out of the flood stopped him cold. “Excuse me, did you say crib?”
“Oh, it won’t be a huge crib—I don’t want you to think the space is that big.” There was that laugh again, but he was still stuck on crib. “It’s really just a cubbyhole for Ally and the baby.”
Ally and the baby. And Molly said they had until March. A quick count backward meant that if Ally was pregnant, she’d conceived the baby in June. They were on Tortola in June. She’d told him she’d broken up with her ex months before, which meant she’d gotten pregnant on Tortola.
Adrenaline surged through his system.
“What time do you close today?”
“Oh, we’ll be here until at least five-thirty or so. Can you come this afternoon?”
Without a doubt. “And your address?”
“Four seventeen West Jefferson, suite C. We’ll—”
Chris hung up.
Ally was pregnant. There was a strong possibility the baby was his. Not only had she fled Tortola without saying goodbye, she hadn’t bothered to try to find him and let him know she was carrying his child? Maybe she’d tried to, but…no, he wasn’t that
