CHAPTER SIX
Raven Hawthorne steeped his fingers together in front of his face as he stared with acute displeasure at the bumbling private detective in front of him. The man was Irish with freckles on every inch of his face and eyes that seemed smart and intelligent, but so far, he wasn’t impressed.
“Are you telling me that, in two months, you have been unable to find even one of the three women?” he inquired silkily.
The man paled, his thin upper lip trembling as he croaked, “We have expended considerable resources, Sir. We can’t trace the women. They might as well have dropped off the face of the earth for all the clue they left us.”
“But I gave you the name of one of them…Sage! Sage Talbot.”
“We doubt if that is her real name, Sir, and even if it were, there are over three thousand Sage Talbots living in the States alone,” the private eye wheezed.
Raven hid his disgust behind a polite smile as he rose to his height and offered the man a parting handshake. This man was wasting his time and if he didn’t get rid of the loser in under two seconds, he would probably be tempted to strangle the man.
In the two months since he had woken up to find Sage if that was even her real first name gone, he hadn’t been himself. He had become unusually cold and ruthless, firing employees at the drop of a hat and driving bargains that were so hard that most of his business associates were openly becoming wary of him.
She’d had the unmitigated gall to screw his brains out and then steal away in the dead of night, taking his favorite wristwatch with her, like a common thief. A hitherto unrevealed and lame sentimental side tried to tell him that perhaps she had taken the wristwatch to serve as a keepsake; a memento to remember him by. He ruthlessly shoved that thought aside. There was no justification for what she had done; she had stolen from him and he would hunt her to the ends of the earth, if he had to, to take back what she stole from him.
His hotel records had not been able to yield much about the three friends because they had paid cash, but he had a friend in the FBI who might be able to help him. He recalled that he had managed to take a picture with her in one of those public photo booths. He ripped the picture out of his wallet, breathing a sigh of relief that at least she had not taken his wallet as another souvenir.
He would send the picture to a friend at Quantico; see if he could use some sort of face recognition software to help him.
He spun his chair around to stare out the huge French windows at the bubbling streets of New York. Somewhere in this world was the woman who had stolen his wristwatch, the last gift his mother had given him before she died and he would find her, or die trying.
She had stolen something else too, he admitted to himself, but he didn’t want to examine it too closely to ascertain what it was.
* * *
Sage Tariq bent over the toilet and emptied the contents of her stomach, her face twisted in a grimace as she stared at what she had thrown up.
It wasn’t every day a person learned she had gotten pregnant by a faceless stranger with the unlikely name of Raven Hawthorne. She could track him down, she knew, but she didn’t want to. She knew his hotel in Spain and his restaurant too, but he wasn’t a Spaniard; he was American. She had never tried to find out if he lived in America or Europe, but she knew one thing, she wanted this baby. It was unexpected, yes, but it would be a reminder of the most magical night of her life. She stared, with regret, at the wristwatch she had taken from him as a keepsake; if she had known he had given her something as precious as the life she carried beneath her breast, she would never have taken a mere watch. Eden and Beth had not even remembered to ask if she picked his wallet in line with the bet’s rules; they had been too involved in getting the details of their lovemaking.
She missed him, she realized. She had not been herself since she returned from her trip, and she had even quit her job because everything that used to interest her, suddenly did not.
Her friends were worried about her; according to them, she had been moping around, as though her heart had been broken, since they got back from Spain and they didn’t understand it or like it. But try as she might, Sage could not dredge up much interest in anything. Flowers seemed dull and lifeless, work was a monotony she had to escape by resigning, even her usual evenings with the girls hardly appealed to her. Maybe because she hadn’t told them she was pregnant. It didn’t help, either, that Brent had been inundating her with calls since she returned; apparently, he had had a change of heart. Well, as far as she was concerned, he could take his changed heart and shove it!
Lately, she had taken up her one true passion; painting. She painted on large canvasses, from morning till night; bright, bold, exotic colors that reminded her of Spain and a passionate dark-haired lover with smoldering eyes as black as night.
On impulse, she ripped away a canvas she had been doodling aimlessly on for days and placed a fresh, blank, paper on the easel. She impatiently grabbed the tendrils of blond hair falling all over her face and did them up in a haphazard knot at the very top of her head, knotting it firmly and holding it securely in place with a rubber band.
Sage closed her eyes, letting her mind drift over the streets of memory. Images of Raven, lying peacefully atop the bed, his eyes shut in slumber, floated through her mind and she licked her lips slowly, almost feeling his lips on hers.
With a sigh, she let her brown eyes flicker open and with that image in her mind’s eyes, she started to paint, drawing large, bold brush strokes across the blank canvas, enjoying the feel of the brush beneath her hand as she drew him from memory. She must have sat there for hours, but it felt like mere minutes; when she looked out of the window though, night had fallen.
With a sigh, she turned away from the canvas, not stopping to admire her work as she strolled toward the kitchen for a snack. This baby would have her fat in no time, she thought. She had been eating every chance she got of late when she wasn’t puking her guts out, that is.
She grabbed a jar of peanut butter from the kitchen cabinet and used a spoon to scoop some out of the jar. She licked the spoon, shutting her eyes in bliss as the tangy flavor of the peanut butter hit her tongue.
A knock at the door drew her attention and with a weary sigh, she headed toward it. As she passed the partially open curtains of the living room, she spied Eden’s Yaris parked outside.
“Eden, you really need to get off my back,” she sighed as she opened the door.
She froze.
Eden and Beth stood on the doorstep with identical wary expressions on their faces; behind them stood Brent, sweating profusely.
Sage glared at the trio, disbelief and betrayal roiling through her. “What is this?”
“Sage, hear him out,” Beth began.
Eden was nodding vigorously, her large green eyes earnest in her pretty face. “You do need to hear him out. I chewed him out when he came to us, but he’s sincere.”
“Just as he was sincere the last time he strolled off with Jessamine on his arm after calling me fat!”
“Sage” Brent began.
“No! You don’t get to say my name,” she cut in icily, swinging her head around to glare at him. She must have moved too fast because, suddenly, she was dizzy. “I’m going in to sit down,” she declared weakly.
“Are you all right?” Beth asked, concern etched on her small face.
“You two muttonheads may come in if you want,” she declared. “But Brent, if you so much as set one foot past that door, so help me, I will chop it off!”
Brent paled, sweat standing clear on his upper lips. Then, just when she thought she would have to physically shove him out, dizzy or no, he mercifully turned around and skulked away.
As she watched him leave, Sage couldn’t help comparing the twerp to Raven and she wondered for the umpteenth time what she had ever seen in Brent Davies; the man was not in the same league as Raven. Heck, he was not even in the same stratosphere!
Another wave of dizziness assailed her and she turned away and slowly walked into her living room, sinking onto the nearest sofa and shutting her eyes.
Eden and Beth followed her worriedly, identical expressions of guilt etched on their features. They were so worried they left the front door wide open, but Sage was too busy trying not to keel over to notice.
“Sage?”
“I need to rest, please.”
“You don’t look good, honey. What’s wrong? You’ve been acting weird since we got back from Spain and you keep saying nothing’s wrong,” Beth said, biting her lip.
“The man didn’t have something you caught, did he?” Eden asked, sounding even more worried than Beth.
Sage stifled a laugh. She had caught something all right, but not the way Eden meant. “Right on the money,” she said derisively.
Her friends paled and exchanged glances.
“That bastard! He infected you with something?” Eden whispered in disbelief.
“I caught something from him all right; I caught his sperm.”
They both paused, confused.
“That doesn’t make sense, Sage,” Beth said gently, in case Sage was losing her mind.
“I’m pregnant,” she said quietly.
The shock on their faces was so comical Sage actually began to laugh. She sat up, feeling the dizziness pass as she enjoyed the expression on their faces.
Beth recovered first. “Oh my goodness, that’s amazing! It is amazing, right?” she asked cautiously, watching Sage’s face.
Sage nodded, her blond curls dancing around her face. “It’s the best thing that has happened to me in years.”
Eden was still speechless.
“And who’s the father? Brent or Raven?” Beth asked.
“Raven, of course. Brent hadn’t touched me in months before we split. You haven’t said anything,” Sage noted, looking over at Eden.
“Oh, she’s said a lot,” Beth assured her. “On the inside.”
“So have you told Raven?” Beth asked, her eyes shining.
“No, and I don’t plan to. And speaking of, what were you thinking, bringing Brent here?”
“You had been moping around since we got back and we just thought the breakup hit you harder than we realized. Little did we know, you had gone and fallen for Raven!” Beth said.
“I don’t want to talk about Raven. I don’t even want to think about him,” Sage declared, rising to her feet and pacing, unaware of the tall, silent man who had strolled in the door.
“Is that why you painted a giant picture of him?” Eden asked saucily, finally recovering her vocal cords.
“I was going to ask the exact same question myself,” someone said bitingly from the doorway.
All three friends turned in horror to see Raven Hawthorne standing just inside the living room, his face alive with wrath as he glared at the life-like painting of himself gracing the easel.
It was all too much, Sage felt herself slide helplessly onto the floor as darkness overtook her.