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“Yeah, he’s right,” Marlowe spoke for the group. I’m so sorry you’re facing this. We know Harper’s yours. We’re certain of it.”
The others murmured their agreement.
“When do you get the results?” Bowie wanted to know.
“If the hospital doesn’t have to repeat your test, too,” Jace said.
Again, chuckles spread around the room. No one could argue that the hospital had more misses than hits with their family lately.
“Are you handling this okay, Asher?”
Genevieve watched him with a mother’s concern, though she already had enough to worry about.
Finally, his family gave him the chance to fill in the details about the possible switch and the impending results. He finished just as Dulcie announced that dinner was served.
Asher walked with the others into the dining room, though he was certain he wouldn’t be able to eat anything. Strange how telling the rest of his family hadn’t given him as much relief as he’d hoped it would, even if they had his back, like always.
The appointment for receiving the test results still hung over him like a rain cloud following him alone. Yet he wasn’t by himself in this. As he’d recognized the week before, there was only one person who could understand his fear that night, could feel it all the way to her bones. He couldn’t worry that it might be a bad idea. He had to go to her.
Chapter 18
A flat sound yanked Willow from a troubled sleep. Her buzzer? Her alarm clock? She blinked into a darkness that suddenly had become sinister, its shadows stretching from walls to floors, its sounds shrill and disturbing.
Had those who’d threatened her business and her home decided that the negative-review campaign wasn’t doing its damage quickly enough? She’d sensed that someone had been watching her the past few nights. Had it been more than just her already spooked imagination?
The digital clock on her bedside table read only ten thirty. She’d been asleep no more than a half hour. Would someone try to get to her while her neighbors with later bedtimes might still be awake to hear her screams? She slid from beneath the sheets and stepped over to her bedroom window. The dark sedan that had been parked outside her house for the past few days was still there, her two posted security guards likely drinking coffee and watching from inside it.
She crossed to the bedroom next door to hers, carefully turned the knob and tiptoed over to the crib. Luna slept sweetly on her back, her fisted hands above her head, her legs forming a diamond-shape opening from her diaper to the touching bottoms of her feet. Her child safe, Willow could finally breathe normally again.
She was almost convinced that she’d dreamed up the sound that had awakened her, but just as she climbed back into bed, someone knocked at the door. Were the security guards even inside that car across the street? Had she been too quick to assume that she and Luna were safe?
After pulling on her lightweight robe, she scanned the shadows in her room for anything she could use as a weapon. A plastic hanger? An empty laundry basket? She didn’t even have a soiled diaper handy to toss in an attacker’s face. She settled on the golf umbrella in the corner. She could use it to shove someone over the railing at the top of her outside stairs if she hit hard and fast.
But at the door, she paused, flipped on the porch light and leaned toward the peephole. Asher stood there, glancing back over his shoulder. After unlatching the bolt, she threw open the door.
“What’s going on? Did something happen with Harper?”
He shook his head. “She’s fine. Marlowe offered to stay with her so I could get out of the house.”
“That was nice of her.”
“I know it’s late.” He cleared his throat. “Did I wake you?”
As she shrugged to answer, she followed the line of his gaze to her robe that had fallen loose despite her best effort to cinch it. The V-neckline of her simple silk shift peeked out along with the shadow between her breasts. The garment’s hem skimmed her thighs.
She wrapped one side of the collar over the other and knotted the belt.
He cleared his throat. “What’s with the umbrella?”
“Uh, thought it might rain.”
“You mean since the region averages about a quarter inch in the whole month of May? Sure you didn’t plan to whack me with it?”
“Guess you’ll never know.”
He glanced over his shoulder into the night, his arms tight against his sides. “Were you worried someone else was out there? I talked to the guards when I came. Have you received more threats?”
“Nothing like that. Though I was a little concerned when my door buzzer went off so late.”
