An Engagement in Seattle - Debbie Macomber [71]
“You know a lot about this…slimeball.” That was an American expression Alek found particularly fitting.
Peck shrugged. “I was paid to learn what I could. The guy’s an open book. You, on the other hand, weren’t so easy to track down. Your sister wouldn’t tell me a thing. She pretended she didn’t understand English.”
“Who hired you to follow me?” Alek was growing bored with this detailed speech.
“Sorry, but that’s privileged information.”
“Julia?” His heart pounded hard with excitement.
“Nope. My lips are sealed. But I can tell you it isn’t her. She doesn’t know anything about this, although what I’m supposed to tell you concerns her.”
Alek was beginning to think he didn’t like Peck as much as he initially had. “Then tell me.”
Peck arched his brows at Alek’s less than patient tone. “First, let me ask you a couple of questions.”
“I don’t have time for this.” Alek surged to his feet and stalked away. He half expected Peck to follow him, but when the investigator didn’t get up, he slowed his pace.
Alek had gone a block before he recognized his mistake. His impatience had cost him what he’d wanted most, information about Julia. He turned back, walking at a fast clip. He need not have worried; Peck was sitting at the table, enjoying the fish-and-chips dinner Alek had hastily left behind.
Alek stood over him and Peck licked his fingers. “I thought you might have a change of heart.”
“Tell me.”
“No problem. There’s something Jerry thought you’d like to know about his sister. She’s going to be a mother. If I understand correctly, that means you’re about to become a daddy.”
Alek felt as if he’d had his legs knocked out from under him. He literally slumped onto the picnic table. “When?”
“Don’t know. But I don’t think she’s very far along. A month, maybe two.”
“Have you seen her? Is she healthy?”
Peck shrugged. “The last time I did, she was a little green around the gills.”
Another crazy American idiom, one that made no sense to him at all. “Green gills? What does that mean?”
“You know, a little under the weather.”
Alek’s confusion increased. “Say it in plain English, please.”
“Okay, okay. She’s sick every afternoon. Jerry says it’s like watching Old Faithful. About three-fifteen her assistant leads her to the ladies’ room so she can lose her lunch. It’s perfectly normal from what I understand. Not that I know much about pregnant women.”
Alek felt as if someone were sitting on his chest and the weight kept increasing. A baby. His baby. Julia was going to have his baby.
He stood up again, frowning. He had a right to know, and the news shouldn’t have come from his brother-in-law, either. Julia should have told him herself.
A low, burning anger simmered in his blood. He was angry, angrier than he’d been in a long time, and he wasn’t about to let this go.
“You tell Jerry something for me,” Alek muttered.
“Sure.”
He paused. He didn’t have any cause to be angry with Jerry. His friend had taken the initiative and sent Peck to tell him what he should’ve been told from the beginning—by Julia. And he himself had been avoiding Jerry, at least for now—because of Julia.
“You wanted me to pass something along to Jerry?” Peck pressed.
“Yeah,” Alek said, feeling the beginnings of a smile. “Tell him I think he’s going to make a very good uncle.”
Julia took another bite of her celery stalk, then set it back on the plate. Her attention wavered from her book for only an instant while she reached for a slice of apple.
The manual, one she’d recently picked up at a bookstore, described the stages of pregnancy week by exciting week. She kept the book hidden from Anna and brought it out in the evenings. By the time Junior was ready to be born, she’d practically have the whole three hundred pages memorized.
She called the baby Junior, although she didn’t know yet if it was a boy or a girl. Funny, only a couple