Page 97 of Stone Vows

“Are you guys crazy?” I ask them. “What is it about‘he could sue me for custody’that you don’t understand? I took his baby away. Without his consent. He would have a solid case against me.” I look at Kyle in anger. “You promised you wouldn’t contact him.”

“I won’t, Lexi. I would never do that without your okay. We’re just tossing around ideas here. When Grant came to the hospital, he said you had something he couldn’t get from anyone else. Do you think he was talking about the ring?”

I shrug. “I suppose he could have been. But he never fussed too much over the jewelry after he gave it to me. After he got his way. Anyway, if he came looking for me in New York because he found out I sold the ring, the idea that he needs to get it from me is kind of a moot point. I’m more concerned that he was talking about Ellie. That he somehow knows I had a child.”

“How could he know?” Mallory asks. “Didn’t you say you ran away the day you found out?”

I nod. “Yes. And I took the pregnancy test and all the packaging with me. I didn’t see a doctor until I got to New York.”

“Boobs,” Gavin says, and all heads turn to him.

Baylor’s jaw drops. “You’ll have to excuse my husband,” she says. “He left his manners down in the building lobby.”

Gavin laughs, grabbing his wife’s hand. “When you were pregnant, your boobs got bigger almost immediately. Hell, when you got pregnant with Caitlyn, I was the one who told you to take a test, remember?”

“Oh, my God, you’re right,” Baylor says. She turns to me. “Maybe he suspected.”

“No,” I say. “No way.” Then I think about how Grant loved my boobs. He loved to show them off in tight dresses. He didn’t want me wearing bras around the house. He was always touching them. Palming them. Studying them.

Oh, shit.Shit, shit, shit.

Maybe hedidknow. “That’s all the more reason to keep him from finding me. If he’s trying to find me because he knows about Ellie, that means he’s afterher.” I look at Kyle. “You said it yourself, I have something nobody else can give him.”

“You realize you’ll be a prisoner of circumstance, don’t you?” Ethan asks. “You’ll never be able to get a passport, or any identification for that matter. You’ll never be able to marry. You won’t even be able to enroll Ellie in school.”

“I’ll homeschool,” I say. “And marriage is overrated.”

“Ethan,” Charlie says. “With all your connections, couldn’t you conjure up a new identity for the two of them? Say, Elizabeth and Ellie Smith? I’ve seen some pretty authentic-looking documents pass through our offices before.”

Mallory’s husband, Chad, points his fork at me. “You know, we have some pretty realistic identification for some of the characters I’ve portrayed. I wonder if I could find out who does that for the studio.” He turns to Gavin. “Gavin? Maybe you can put out feelers, too.”

“Sure. I could do that.”

“See?” Charlie says. “Problem solved. We’ll just have to get used to calling you Elizabeth again.”

“Nobody’s calling her Elizabeth,” Kyle insists. “We’re going to figure this out. We just need time.” He sighs and runs those large hands through his hair. “Hiding away forever is no way to live, Lexi. You’ll be looking over your shoulder your whole life.”

For a second, I wonder if he’s worried that I’ll overstay my welcome.

“Given the choice, I don’t really fancy living in hiding either,” I say. “But wouldn’t you all do anything you had to do to protect your children? What if there was even a small chance one of them could be taken away?”

“She’s right, guys,” Skylar says, glancing back towards the theater room where her own two kids are safe and sound. “She can’t risk it. The guy is a cop. A corrupt one. And he’s probably got a lot of other dirty cops in his pocket. Maybe even dirty politicians. You guys might have connections, but my guess is that he does, too.”

A lot of heads nod in agreement.

Kyle blows out a long breath. “Okay. We’ll all try to figure out how to get you some identification. But you’ll still need escorts when you leave the building. I don’t want you and Ellie walking around the city.”

“I walked around the city for six months without being found, you know,” I remind him. “Before I had Ellie.”

“That was before Grant knew for sure that you were here. Now he knows. Now that he traced the ring back to New York City.”

“I’ve got wigs,” Mallory says. “Remember the wigs you sent to me, Chad, when we first started dating?”

I wrap a piece of my hair around my finger. “Maybe I should have stuck with red.”

“No,” Kyle says, his eyes burning into mine. “You definitely shouldn’t have stuck with red.”

In my periphery, I see Baylor elbow Skylar in the ribs as they watch Kyle look at me.

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