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“W
hen is she going out of town again?”

“I don’t know.”

“I pay you good money to know.”

“She’s been reassigned.”

“What’s that suppose to mean?”

“She won’t be travelling. It looks as if she’s going to work out of the West Palm Beach home office.”

“Get her out of town. I don’t care how you do it, but I want her whacked.”

“But, sir, what if I can’t…”

“I don’t pay for can’ts and won’ts. Get her the hell out of Florida and away from Martin Cole.”

The connection ended abruptly, and the man with the throbbing vein in his forehead swore savagely under his breath. He needed the money he was being offered to kill Parris Simmons, but getting her out of the state was more difficult than he first thought. If it was up to him he would follow her, then pop her when she was getting into or out of her car. One clean shot to the head with a hollowed-out bullet. Quick, clean and simple. He had to get her, and soon, because his gambling debts were adding up. Parris Simmons would be his ticket to freedom,
because if he didn’t come up with enough money to cover his bets both of them would be found floating along the Intra-coastal Waterway
.

Parris woke up disoriented. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. The red numbers read twelve-thirty. She had been asleep for more than six hours.

A deep-seated hunger gripped her stomach, reminding her that she had skipped lunch. Turning to her right, she shook Martin.

“Wake up!” she whispered.

He sat up, reaching for the lamp. “What’s wrong?”

Parris laid a hand over her flat middle. “I’m starving.”

He pushed his hair off his forehead. “You should be. You slept through dinner.” Reaching out, he pulled her across his lap. “What do you want to eat?”

She ran her fingertips through the hair on his chest. “Lobster.”

“What!” The word exploded from his mouth.

“I have a craving for lobster.”

Hooking a finger under her chin, Martin raised her face. His sweeping eyebrows lifted. “Are you certain you aren’t pregnant?”

She laughed at his bemused expression. “Of course not. I just want lobster.”

Martin released her and picked up the telephone. He dialed a number, then waited. “Frank, Martin. How late are you going to stay open? Yes, tonight. Good. I’ll be there within the hour.” He smiled at the expectant expression on Parris’s face. “Lobster. Thanks.” He hung up, saying, “Put some clothes on, darling. We’re on our way to Fort Lauderdale.”

It was another two weeks before Parris thought about what Martin had asked her the night they drove to Fort Lauderdale for lobster. She had missed her period.

Her forehead was furrowed in concentration as she sat at her desk staring at a calendar showing the past three months.

She hadn’t had a menstrual flow since the beginning of October. But nothing in November. It was now the second week in December and she was very late.

Her fingers beat a rapid staccato tapping on the desk. When? When could it have happened? Martin had always protected her except for the first time, and that was the end of September.

How? When?

The question screamed inside of her head until she was mindless with confusion. Ocho Rios!

A gasp escaped her constricted lips as the realization washed over her like an icy shower. The night Martin had asked her to marry him; the night they had confessed their love for each other; the night their unbridled passions began a new life inside her body.

Burying her face in her hands, Parris blinked back tears. She wasn’t ready to be a mother; she wasn’t ready to bear Martin’s child; she had too many other things to do with her life.

Maybe she wasn’t pregnant. Maybe something else was wrong with her. Opening her appointment book, she looked up the number to her gynecologist. She was in luck. The receptionist reported that someone had cancelled and if she could be at the office at five-thirty the doctor would see her.

Parris was numbed when she stumbled blindly out of the doctor’s office to her car. The doctor had confirmed her worst fear: she was pregnant. He had tactfully told her about the alternatives, but if she decided to see the pregnancy to term her baby was due the middle of July.

She sat in the car, staring at the pamphlets the nurse had given her. Books explaining how her body would change and what to expect during each trimester.

She laughed and the sound was strange even to her own ears. Laughing seemed to relieve some of the tightness in her chest. Martin had won it all. He had gotten her to live with him and decorate his house. Now he would also get a wife and child.

Parris hadn’t decided how she would tell Martin about the baby. No matter how she would rehearse it she knew it would never come out right.

I’ll give him a gift, she thought. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to see his face when he opened the tiny box with a pair of newborn booties.

Twenty minutes later, Parris maneuvered into an empty parking space in a large mall. The parking lot was crowded with cars. The Christmas shopping season was in full gear.

She opened the door to get out, but something held it shut. It wasn’t until she saw the outline of a man’s body and the barrel of a gun pointed at her that she began to shake.

She couldn’t see the man’s face clearly, but she understood his raspy order when he told her not to move.

Parris was frozen in place as the man opened the door and pushed her over on the seat, letting out a cry of pain when the gear shift on the console stabbed her hip.

“Crawl over me and drive,” he ordered. “I’ll tell you where to go. And if you make any stupid moves I’ll blow your brains out where you sit. I’ve been paid to kill you, but I won’t because I have a soft touch for kids, even those who aren’t born yet. Yeah, I know you’re carrying Martin Cole’s kid. So if you don’t want him lying in a lake without a face you’ll do what I tell you to do. Do you understand me?”

Parris nodded. How was she to drive when her hands were wringing wet. How did he know about Martin? How did he know about her baby?

“Drive.”

“Where?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“To the airport. You’re going to take a little trip.”

“I…I can’t. Martin’s expecting me home by…”

“Shut up! Now drive!”

She didn’t know how she managed to drive without causing an accident. Several times she swerved too close to other cars,
but the pressure of the gun barrel against her ribs shocked her into awareness.

“Who’s paying you?”

“Shut up!”

The one time she tried turning her head to see her kidnapper’s face he pushed the gun savagely into her side. “Don’t. I told you before I have a soft spot for babies.”

She kept her eyes straight ahead. “This is some kind of joke, isn’t it?”

“No way, lady. This is for real. I was paid to get you out of Florida and I’m doing it. I’m also suppose to kill you once we cross the state line. But just between you and me I’m not going to do that. Because of your baby. I don’t murder no babies. And that means once you leave you can’t ever come back. Because if I hear that you’re back or you’ve contacted your boyfriend I’ll make you sorry you were ever born. And if you ever tell Martin Cole about our little meeting and chat, I’ll cut him up until there’s nothing left of him.”

The rest became a blur. Parris remembered driving into the airport and being told to stop in the section of the airport where private planes were parked. She was blindfolded and helped into a small aircraft, then lost track of time the moment the craft was airborne.

Martin paced the floor like a caged rat. Parris had been missing for more than forty-eight hours and the police had no clue to her whereabouts. They told him what he already knew: she had left her office at five and her locked car was found at the airport parking lot.

He tried over and over rethinking the last time they’d been together. Had he said something to anger her? Was she upset about something he had done or said?

Everything had been wonderful. They talked about Christmas and going away together for a long weekend. She hadn’t sounded as if she was unhappy. Or was she?

He began to think that maybe he had pressured her into living with him. Had he in some way made her feel guilty that he had saved her life?

The had he, maybes and whys attacked him day and night. They attacked him at Christmas and even harder in the new year. Emotionally he was drained and the second week in January he walked into his father’s office and told him he was taking a month’s leave of absence.

A month became three months and when Martin Diaz Cole walked back into the offices of ColeDiz International Ltd. he was a different man. The shorter hair and moustache was not as startling as the change in the man.

He moved his office to the wing with the other corporate officers, and his closed door was a constant reminder that he was no longer available or approachable.

J
oshua Kirkland’s expression hadn’t changed as he listened to Martin talk about Parris Simmons. “What are you going to do, Martin?”

Martin glanced down at the black and white photographs, his jaw hardening. “I’m going to New York.”

Joshua nodded. “Do you need me for anything else?”

“No. And thanks, Josh.” He watched Joshua rise to his feet and walk out of his office, closing the door quietly.

Leaning back on the chair, Martin closed his eyes and let feelings he hadn’t felt in years sweep over him. He sat for half an hour before he pushed the button on the intercom.

“Joan. Call the airport and have the jet fueled and ready for a flight to New York. I’d like to leave early tomorrow morning.”

He barely heard Joan’s acknowledgment as he sat at the desk until the sun set and the office was shadowed in darkness.

Mentally and emotionally he was ready for Parris Simmons.

“Mommy, it’s snowing!” Regina came to a quick stop in the middle of the narrow utility kitchen. “Do you think they’re going to close the school?”

Parris secured the top to a thermos, giving her daughter a wary glance. “I know I’m not hearing Regina Simmons talk about
playing hooky from school, am I? I would think after the grade you managed to
earn
on your last math test you’d want to go to school on Saturdays and Sundays.”

Regina pushed out her lower lip. “Aw, Mommy, it wasn’t so bad.”

Parris’s eyebrows shot up. “Forty-two?”

“Tanya Davis is the smartest girl in the class and she got twenty-seven,” Regina mumbled.

“Regina Simmons happens to be my daughter, not Tanya Davis, young lady. We’ll let Mrs. Davis worry about Tanya’s twenty-seven, thank you.”

Regina shuffled over to the butcher block table in the dining area. She frowned at a bowl of steaming cereal. “I hate math and I hate oatmeal.”

“And I’d hate for you to repeat the fourth grade, Miss Simmons.”

Regina flopped down on her chair and groped for the spoon beside the bowl, not bothering to raise her gaze. The
Miss Simmons
said it all. Her mother was angry.

“I’m sorry, Mommy. I promise to study real hard. Every day,” she added. Closing her eyes, she grimaced and swallowed a spoonful of oatmeal.

Parris turned her attention back to preparing Regina’s lunch, while glancing over at the expanse of glass in the dining area. The first snowfall of the winter had hit the northeast, and there was still another three weeks before Christmas.

Her clear brown eyes saddened with the thought of Christmas. It had been exactly ten years ago that she had been forced to leave Florida and Martin Cole. She had spent that Christmas alone, alone and weeping unconsolably in a strange furnished room in New York City.

However, many things had changed in ten years. She was a mother of a beautiful child, she had purchased her own condominium apartment and she had secured a position as a freelance decorator for a consortium of local antique dealers. Freelancing allowed her the flexibility to schedule projects around Regina’s school vacations and class trips.

“I’m finished, Mommy. Breakfast was very good. Thank you.”

Parris hid a smug grin. The applesauce concealed at the bottom of the bowl had been a bonus. “You’re welcome.” Regina had eaten her cereal and toast and drank her juice in record time this morning. Usually the child lingered over her food each morning, testing the limits of Parris’s patience.

“Don’t forget to brush your teeth, then get the comb and brush and I’ll do your hair, angel. How would you like it this morning?”

Regina’s large dark eyes sparkled with laughter. “Two French braids.”

She took the bowl from her daughter and dropped it into the sink filled with soapy water. Leaning over, she kissed the end of Regina’s nose. “Two French braids coming up.”

Staring at Regina’s skipping figure until she disappeared from view, Parris’s eyes narrowed in concentration. Every time she saw the child’s dimpled smile she was reminded of Martin Cole. Regina had inherited Martin’s hair, eyes, quick smile, dimpled cheeks and his loose-limb grace. As long as she lived Parris would never completely be exorcised of her child’s father. He lived in a smaller, feminine image that was Regina Simmons.

She walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa to wait for Regina. Her decorating trademarks were everywhere. Each room had been created to evoke a different atmosphere, and each one possessing its own personality.

Nineteenth-century English gas lamps punctuated the sophisticated living room setting. The texture of woven fabric in sand beige covered the walls and the upholstered furniture set on an antique French parquet flooring. A patterned area rug in shades of sand beige, terra-cotta red and chocolate brown complemented the neutral furniture. Recessed ceiling lights cast a warm glow throughout the apartment despite the gray, bitterly cold stormy weather outdoors. Massive potted plants filled both the living and dining rooms, making the space an oasis of verdant lushness.

The doorbell chimed. “Parris, are you sending Regina to school?” came a cheery voice, followed by three rapid knocks on the door.

Parris crossed the room and opened the door. Stephanie Edwards smiled at her neighbor clutching a mug of hot cocoa in one hand. A young boy clothed in a ski hat, suit and boots stood beside Stephanie.

Stephanie’s dark-brown rounded face, framed by a profusion of shoulder-length braids, was blooming with her impending motherhood.

“My daughter happens to need every minute of schooling she can get,” Parris informed a smiling Stephanie.

Scott waddled into the Simmons’s apartment, holding both arms outstretched. A backpack containing textbooks bumped against his back. Stephanie pulled the apple-green colored knitted cap from his head.

“If I fall down I won’t be able to get up,” he whined. “You put too much clothes on me, Mom.”

“Too many, not too much. And stop complaining, Scotty,” Stephanie scolded in a soft voice. She followed her son into the living room.

Scott tugged at the zipper under his neck. “But I’m hot, Mom.”

“I need to have my head examined,” Stephanie groaned. She sat down heavily on a love seat. “What do I need with another baby when this one refuses to grow up?”

Parris glanced down at her neighbor and best friend’s belly. “Under another set of circumstance, I’d gladly change places with you.” What she wanted to say was that if she had married Martin Cole, she was certain they would have had more than one child.

“That’s highly unlikely. Especially since you’re practicing celibacy,” Stephanie said, smiling broadly.

“What’s cellackbessie?” Scott asked, waddling around the living room like a duck.

“Never you mind,” warned his mother.

“How’s a kid to learn something?” he mumbled.

Stephanie stared at her son, biting down on her lower lip. “Celibacy is when a man or a woman…when a man and a woman…” Her gaze shifted to Parris.

Parris returned her stare, unable to believe what she had just
heard. Scott was nearly ten and Stephanie was to give birth to her second child within a month yet she was too embarrassed to broach the subject of human sexuality with her prepubescent son.

“Celibacy is when a man or woman do not engage in sexual relations of any kind,” Parris said, completing the explanation.

“Oh.” Scott pulled down the zipper of his ski suit, his curiosity waning quickly once he was given an answer. “I know about sex,” he volunteered, “but not about cellackbessie.”

Regina walked into the living room, carrying a jacket with a pair of matching ski pants. “Hi, Scotty. Do you want to make a snow castle in the playground behind our building after we come home from school?”

Scott’s eyes widened. “Girls can’t make a good snow castle. The one you made last year melted before you put the tower on it.”

“You’re mad because my castle was better than yours,” Regina retorted with a blaze of temper.

“It was not!”

“Enough, kids,” Parris interrupted, ending the debate. She motioned to Regina. “Let’s go, snow bunny. I need to comb your hair before the bus arrives.”

Regina stuck out her tongue at Scott when he thumbed his nose at her, and both mothers rolled their eyes upward.

Ten minutes later, Regina, bundled in a bright red jacket and matching pants with her two French braids tucked under her red knitted cap, and Scott trudged out to wait in front of the modern apartment complex for their school bus. Both of them stomped through the falling snow, laughing when they left footprints on the untouched cover of whiteness.

“I think your daughter intimidates my son.” Stephanie followed Parris into the kitchen.

“Only because he can’t resist teasing her.” She plugged in the coffee maker while easing her tall, slender frame down onto a high stool. “Blessed peace.”

Stephanie rubbed her lower back. “Amen to that.” She duck-walked over to the dining area, easing her body down onto an armless chair.

“What are you going to do with four weeks vacation time on your hands?”

Parris, crossing her arms under her breasts, smiled a full-mouth, relaxed smile. “Four weeks sounds like a lot of time but a month will go by before I know it. I decided to save my vacation time because I’m thinking of taking Regina away for Christmas.”

“But you always go away for Christmas.”

Parris nodded. What she didn’t tell Stephanie was that this Christmas was a special one. It marked the tenth anniversary of her flight from Florida. Ten years was a long time to be away from her home and the man she loved.

“I have an open ticket to fly anywhere in the continental forty-eight States, but I haven’t decided where I want to go.”

“Regina’s been talking about Disney World.”

“Disney World will probably be too crowded. I was thinking of the new family attraction in Vegas,” she answered instead of telling Stephanie that she could never go back to Florida.

“When we get back I suppose I’ll be ready to babysit Scott when you go into the hospital for your new arrival.”

“Forget it,” Stephanie protested, shaking her neatly braided hair. “You work yourself into the ground all year and when you get a chance to have a month to yourself, I’m not going to ask you to care for another child. Calvin’s mother has already bought her ticket to come up for a few days before Christmas. And I certainly don’t want to cheat her out of the extraordinary opportunity to look after her most delightful grandson, whose name I will not mention at this time.”

Parris ran the palms of her hands down the denim fabric covering her thighs. “Scott will change once the baby comes.”

“The kid’s obnoxious, Parris.”

“He’s normal, Stephie. He’s just a little boy.”

“I’ve waited too long between pregnancies.”

“Stop complaining and enjoy your family,” Paris suggested.

Stephanie did not miss the fleeting look of sadness sweep over Parris’s face. She did not know all there was to know about Parris Simmons, but knew Parris had no one else besides Regina.
When Parris moved into the neighboring apartment three years earlier she told her she was divorced and both her parents had died before Regina’s birth. Parris had never once spoken to her about Regina’s father, and respecting her neighbor’s right to privacy, Stephanie hadn’t asked any questions.

Stephanie rose slowly to her feet. “I’d better get ready for my doctor’s appointment. Somehow it takes me forever to get myself together.”

Parris saw Stephanie massage an area in her lower back. She didn’t think her friend was going to make it through December. “Do you want me to drive you?”

“No, thanks. I’ll see you later.”

Stephanie made her way slowly across the living room, Parris following. She opened and closed the door behind Stephanie, mentally assessing what she had to do on her first day of her four-week vacation.

Her thoughts were interrupted when there came three rapid knocks on the door for the second time that morning. The three knocks were Stephanie’s signal.

Don’t tell me Stephanie’s baby is coming earlier than predicted
, she thought, opening the door quickly.

Parris couldn’t believe her eyes. She became rigid, unable to move. Her breath came in short pants as she leaned against the door frame, her body sagging weakly.

“No,” she moaned, pressing a fist to her mouth. She was dreaming; that’s it, she was dreaming and when she awoke everything would be as it was. He wasn’t in New York—he just couldn’t be. She’d eluded him for ten years, even though a part of her wanted him to find her; not for herself but for Regina.

She shifted as he pushed the door. Parris had not thought of trying to close it or lock it. It would’ve been useless to lock a door against Martin Cole. She knew he simply would’ve kicked it open. The cold, hard look in his eyes said it all.

She jumped slightly when he stepped into her living room, dropping two soft leather carry-on bags to the floor.

“Martin,” she whispered, not knowing where she garnered the strength as she made her way over to the sofa that faced a matching love seat.

Closing her eyes, Parris rested her head on a plump cushion, willing her mind blank.