Covert Conception. Delores Fossen

this’ll take long anyway. I’m not into home movies, and we don’t have much to say to each other.”

      Natalie flexed her eyebrows in a suit-yourself, you’ll-regret-it gesture, sat on the edge of his desk next to the DVD player and jabbed the play button. “This is the security film from the night of my party,” she explained. Her voice was strained with emotion. “It was taken in the hall just outside my bedroom.”

      When Rick saw a couple on the small screen, he bit off another surly question about what this could possibly have to do with him. Instead, he concentrated on the images. However, it took him several moments to make out exactly what he was seeing.

      Natalie and him.

      Or rather it was a couple who looked like Natalie and him. Because there was no way it could actually be them.

      Not caring for the sickening feeling that suddenly came over him, Rick pushed himself away from the filing cabinet and moved closer to study the images on the screen. “Are you going to tell me why you doctored this video?”

      Outrage flashed in her eyes, but she didn’t voice it. The rush of emotion seemed to make her queasy. Or maybe it was the sweltering heat. Because she wiped away the perspiration again and slid her hand over her stomach as if to steady it. “I didn’t doctor it.”

      “Then someone did,” he fired back.

      “Kitt checked,” Natalie explained. Her breath was uneven now, and the color was draining from her cheeks. “The images haven’t been altered.”

      “The hell they haven’t.” Rick watched as the couple got closer and closer to Natalie’s bedroom door.

      The couple staggered. The woman’s right arm banged against the doorjamb. The man didn’t fare much better. He crossed in front of her. Staggered as well. And his left shoulder hit against the wall.

      That caused Rick’s mouth to turn to dust.

      The couple’s awkward intimate dance continued until the man caught the woman. She went into his arms. Willingly. Their bodies came together. Mouths, too.

      In a desperate, hungry kiss.

      “I know for a fact that I would have remembered that,” Rick insisted in a rough whisper.

      Natalie swallowed hard enough that he could hear it. But what she didn’t do was agree with him. Instead, she froze the images and pointed to the woman’s right arm. “I had a bruise there the morning after my party. I didn’t know then how I’d gotten it.”

      Hell.

      Rick waited for the other shoe to fall.

      She pointed to the man’s left shoulder. To the spot that had rammed into the wall. “Did you have a bruise or any kind of mark?”

      Rick didn’t even have to think about it. “Yeah. I figured I’d gotten it here at work.”

      Natalie’s posture and bearing were suddenly as unsteady as the couple in the video. “I don’t think you got that bruise here.”

      It took him a moment to get his teeth unclenched so he could speak. “Are you saying you think that happened?” Rick asked. “You really believe the two of us had a hot and heavy kissing session outside your bedroom door?”

      She closed her eyes. Paused. Gathered her breath. “I don’t think the hot and heaviness stopped there. I believe we went inside my bedroom and finished what we started.”

      Her eyelids lifted, and she met his gaze head-on. “I’m four weeks pregnant. And judging from that video, you’re the baby’s father.”

      Chapter Three

      “Is this your idea of a bad joke?” Rick asked.

      Natalie carefully studied his reaction—his iron jaw, his narrowed gunmetal-gray eyes and thunder-struck expression—and she quickly realized she didn’t care for any of it. It was too similar to what her own reaction had been when Kitt first told her about the test results.

      She’d expected…what?

      A confession?

      Perhaps an explanation that would cause all of this to make sense?

      Or maybe that’s what she hoped he would do, help her make sense of the situation. A miracle of sorts. However, it was obvious Rick didn’t have answers or a miracle. Or if he had them, he wasn’t ready to share them with her.

      That didn’t mean he was innocent in all of this.

      “Please tell me this is a joke,” he amended.

      “Are you saying you didn’t orchestrate what happened?” Natalie countered.

      He looked at her as if her ears were on backwards. “You’re damn right that’s what I’m saying.”

      And he was adamant about it, too.

      Natalie suddenly felt even more desperate, and it was desperation that made her toss the next question at him. “Why should I believe you?”

      “Because I’m telling you the truth, that’s why.” Rick opened his mouth. Closed it. Shook his head. Cursed. “Hell’s bells, Natalie, do you really believe I’d drug you so I could sleep with you?”

      She’d already asked herself that. At least a dozen times. And during none of that personal questioning had she convinced herself that Rick would do something like this. He wasn’t the sort of man who required drugging or any coercion to get a woman into bed.

      “I’m pregnant,” she restated. “I don’t know how it happened, and my only clue is that surveillance video. I need answers, and that’s why I’m here.”

      He shook his head. “What you need is to have the pregnancy test repeated.”

      “I’ve already done that.” She was up to a dozen times of watching for minus signs on little urine-soaked white plastic sticks. She’d try a dozen more if necessary, praying for one negative result. “They’ve all been positive.”

      “Then, you need to see a doctor right away,” Rick quickly suggested.

      “I did that a few hours ago. I had an ultrasound and a thorough examination. There’s definitely a baby.”

      He cursed again, made his way to the chair, gripped the armrest and dropped down onto the seat. “This can’t be happening. The tests, the doctor, the ultrasound and the video are all wrong. They have to be.”

      She’d had that reaction, too. Denial. It’d taken hours to get past just the tip of it. But she couldn’t afford Rick that same amount of time to work through his issues. She had an eerie feeling that time wasn’t on their side. “I need you to think back through—”

      “Something happened that night,” he interrupted. But he didn’t say anything else.

      Natalie froze. Waited. She forced herself to stay calm. “Obviously something happened,” she said when Rick just sat there.

      He glanced at her stomach. “I didn’t mean that. I mean I blacked out.”

      Her heart had been racing before that, but she could have sworn it stopped mid-beat. Natalie shook her head. “When? How?”

      But before he could answer, the phone rang. He waved it off, but the ringing continued and when he perused his shop and apparently realized his employees were all busy, he reached across the desk and answered the phone.

      Natalie actually welcomed the interlude. Yes, they needed to get to the bottom of this. Yes, she desperately needed to know what’d happened to her. To them. But she also needed a moment to compose herself. Right now, a thin thread of composure was the only thing that prevented her from screaming. And she didn’t want to lose it in front of Rick.

      What was going on?

      What?

      Natalie