First Lady by Susan Elizabeth Phillips Read Free Book Online Page B

small hips. “This is bullshit.”
    “Yeah, well, so is ninety percent of life.”
    They were so involved in their argument that neither of them noticed the baby, who was slowly and fastidiously spider-crawling down off the curb into the parking lot.
    Nealy rose automatically. A baby in danger. The one thing in life she hadn’t been able to escape since she was sixteen.
    “Quit complaining and get inside,” the man growled.
    “I’m not your slave! You’ve been bossing me around ever since yesterday, and I’m sick of it!”
    An elderly couple in a Cadillac began to back out of a space much too near the crawling baby. Nealy shot forward, bent down, and snatched her up.
    The kind of anger she couldn’t ever express in her real life erupted. “What kind of father are you?”
    Mr. Macho turned slowly and regarded Nealy with flint-gray eyes. She stormed toward him, the baby in her arms. The fact that holding babies terrified her made her even angrier.
    She jabbed her finger toward the Cadillac as it drove away. “Your daughter was crawling right in the path of that car. She could have been hit.”
    He stared at her.
    The closer she got, the taller he seemed. She belatedly remembered that she was supposed to be speaking with a Southern accent. “How could you be so irresponsible?”
    “He doesn’t care,” the girl said. “He hates us.”
    Nealy glared at him. “Children need somebody watching out for them, especially babies.”
    He tilted his head toward the empty parking space next to him. “What happened to your car?”
    She was taken aback. “How do you know about my car?”
    “I saw you get out of it.”
    She refused to let him throw her off track. “Never mind about my car. What about your child?” She thrust the baby toward him, but he didn’t take her. Instead, he stared down at the little one as if he weren’t sure what she was. Finally he turned toward the teenager. “Lucy, take her and get in.”
    “You got a broken arm or something?” the girl shot back.
    “Do what I say. And feed her before we start moving again.”
    His tone had grown so intimidating that Nealy wasn’t surprised when the girl took the baby from her arms. Still, Lucy had enough defiance left to shoot him a lethal glare before she jerked open the door of the motor home and hauled the baby inside.
    The man named Jorik gazed down at Nealy. Although she was tall, he loomed over her, and he looked even tougher close up than he had been from a distance. His nose had a small bump at the bridge, as if he’d broken it falling off an I-beam he was welding.
    “She’s not my kid,” he said. “Neither of them are.”
    “Then what are you doing with them?”
    “I was a friend of their mother’s. So tell me about your car.”
    A yellow caution light flashed in her brain. “There’s nothing to tell.”
    “It was stolen, wasn’t it?”
    He was regarding her so intently, she was afraid he’d recognize her, so she tilted her head a bit to keep him from looking at her full on. “Why do you say that?”
    “Because I saw you park it there, and now it’s gone. Besides, you left your keys inside.”
    Her head shot back up. “You saw them?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You saw them, but you didn’t do anything?”
    “Well . . . I thought about stealing your car myself, but I was afraid of your frog.”
    If she hadn’t been so upset, she might have laughed. His speech marked him as an educated man, which was disconcerting considering his tough-guy appearance. His eyes had dropped to her bulging stomach, and she had to resist the urge to look down and make certain the padding hadn’t shifted.
    “You’d better go inside and call the state police,” he said. “There was a hitchhiker out here earlier. I wouldn’t be surprised if he got tired of waiting for someone to pick him up and decided to take advantage of that free transportation you were offering. I’ll stay around long enough to give them a description.”
    She had no intention