“Because I know you. It’s killing you that she left.”
Marc didn’t reply, just flipped the pen he’d been twiddling in his fingers onto the desk. He was getting angry.
“What’s your point, Mom? You came all the way to Chicago to say I’ve been missing Mari? So what if I have been?”
Brigit pursed her lips together before she spoke. “I thought perhaps I might be able to ease your misery some.”
His laugh was harsh. “I doubt it.”
Brigit inhaled deeply and then plunged ahead. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. I wanted to tell you that a week or two after Mari returned to Harbor Town—two days after my heart attack, in fact—I saw Mari at Harbor Town Memorial. She’d had an appointment there.”
Marc’s brown wrinkled in consternation. “Yeah. She hadn’t been feeling well.”
“Those dizzy spells. And nausea, perhaps?” Brigit asked.
“What are you getting at?”
“She was coming out of an obstetrician’s office, Marc. She told me herself she’d had an appointment there.”
He just stared at his mother’s face. In the distance a car alarm started blaring loudly.
“I’ve had my share of children. I know I haven’t seen Mari for years, but there’s a certain air a woman gets. There are signs. Mari is pregnant, Marc.”
He continued to gape at his mother. His heartbeat started to throb uncomfortably loud in his ears.
Brigit cleared her throat. “And I don’t think I need to tell you that if she was pregnant, it wasn’t with your child.”
“What?” he muttered. He felt like he was trying to absorb his mom’s words and meaning through a thick layer of insulation.
“Even if you two had…intimate relations once Mari had come back to Harbor Town, she wouldn’t have thought she was pregnant after a week. If she is pregnant—or even if she just thought so—it couldn’t be with your child. Mari must have been involved with someone else, Marc. That’s why I came to Chicago. I thought it might ease the sting of her leaving some…to know she must have been involved with another man.”
Marc sat forward slowly in his chair. “That’s why you came here? To tell me that…you thought it would make me feel better?” When his mother didn’t respond, Marc dazedly shook his head. “That’s one hell of a mean-spirited thing to do, Mom.”
Brigit’s face collapsed. “I’m doing it for you, Marc.”
“No,” he stated harshly. “You’re doing it for yourself. You’re doing it because you want the threat of Mari to disappear for good.” He stood abruptly, causing Brigit to start. He reached for his briefcase. “The incredible thing about it is, you did the opposite.”
Brigit stood, looking flustered. “What do you mean? Where are you going?”
“I’m going after Mari.”
He didn’t look back at his mother as he stormed out of the office.
He called to book a flight while he was in the cab. He didn’t even bother to go back to his condo to pack anything. This was too important. He was halfway to the airport and apologizing to an assistant district attorney for not being able to attend the upcoming briefing when another call came through on his cell.
He did a double take when he saw the caller identification.
It was Mari.
Why the hell was she calling him now when she’d refused all of his calls since she’d left?
He so forcefully plunged through the revolving doors of the Palmer House Hotel that they kept spinning a full revolution once he was inside. Mari looked over her shoulder at the sound
, her eyes huge in her face. For a second he just stood there, dazed.
Mari’s eyes. God, would he ever get over their impact?
She turned around. Everything seemed to slow down around him. Sounds became muffled and distant. It was just like when he’d followed her from her concert and walked through these very doors. She’d turned and he’d been compelled to call out when he’d seen her exquisite face.