Gifted To The Dragon: A Paranormal Pregnancy Romance (The Gifted Series Book 2) (10 page)

CHAPTER TEN

I only allowed myself a brief cry, because I had a phone call to make. After drying my eyes and blowing my nose, I went out to the kitchen and fished out agent Cynthia's business card from a drawer, then pulled out my phone and dialed her cell number.

Slightly worried that I might be waking her, since it was still fairly early in the morning, I was relieved when she answered, sounding completely awake and alert. Once I'd told her it was me, she asked what she could help me with, and I didn't hesitate.

"I'd like to be reassigned to a different city, please, as soon as possible. And, honestly, I don't even care if it's a city. It can be a Nowheresville tiny town, or even just a campsite with a few shifters and Gifteds. I really don't even care. I just want to be reassigned anywhere else I might be needed. Just anywhere that isn't Chicago. All I ask is that it still be close enough so that I can still visit my grandma fairly frequently."

There was a long pause before Cynthia spoke.

"Well, may I ask why you're making this request?"

"Well, for one thing, I think Desmond Grant is an insufferable ass, and he's 'not a good guy,' by his own admission, and I refuse to work under his command."

"Well, first impressions can often be wrong. What's another thing?"

"Well...." I hesitated, suddenly slightly embarrassed. "Well, for another thing, I'm pregnant with his child, and he's not thrilled about that. He's devastated, actually. Acted like it was the worst news he'd ever heard in his life."

There was another long pause before Cynthia spoke again, so long that I'd almost started to ask if she was still on the line.

"How did this all come about, Madison? How did you and Commander Grant even meet? And how did you not know that he was in Chicago?"

I didn't feel much like explaining all that.

"Look, Cynthia. Please. I just want to be reassigned to a different city. I just want to get as far from Desmond-"

"But even if the two of you aren't a romantic match, don't you at least want him to have a hand in raising his own child? And in order to do that, it seems like living closely together-"

"He doesn't even
want
to have a hand in raising his own child, though. He called his own child a 'mess,' and a 'disaster.'"

"Directly?"

I hesitated. "Well...well, not the baby directly, but he's none too pleased with the idea of becoming a father, that I can tell. Says he wants nothing to do with it."

"Well, some men need to ease into it. For that matter, some women need to ease into the idea of becoming a parent. In fact, when I became pregnant with my son, I cried for days. It hadn't been a planned pregnancy, and I felt like the world had collapsed all around me. I was afraid that I wouldn't have time for a child, and I was afraid that my career would suffer.

“Not to mention that I really didn't have a maternal bone in my body. However, my son's father felt very strongly that we should keep the baby and try to raise it together, and I finally agreed. Then, a bit to my astonishment, if I'm being frank, the first time I held my son, I fell completely head-over-heels in love. Many parents have a similar experience, and Commander Grant might as well."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Then you cross that bridge when you get there. But first, you at least give him a chance to be a father, and you at least give your child a chance to have a father active in his or her life."

"But you don't understand. He just got done telling me in no uncertain terms that he wants nothing to do with the baby, and he has no interest in being a parent at all. It's not like he said he'll at least give things a try or something. I doubt he'll ever have the opportunity to have a 'head over heels in love' moment holding the baby, because I bet he'll refuse to hold the baby in the first place, or even look at it."

As Cynthia listened patiently, I was strangely beginning to feel like I was a kid on a playground tattling on another kid, and it hadn't been my intention to "tattle" on Desmond. Truly, the only reason I'd called Cynthia was to try to get another Gifted assignment, so that I could still receive the pay and benefits I needed in order to support my baby, all while getting far away from Desmond.
He
made it sound like he just wanted me to move somewhere and live off his money for the rest of my life, and as long as he was rejecting the baby, I didn't want to take a dime from him.

Cynthia was quiet before issuing her verdict. "At this point, we're not going to reassign you, Madison. Chicago is where your services as a Gifted are most urgently needed. You'll continue to live in the tower, which I firmly believe is the best place for you to be right now."

"And what if Desmond kicks me out? What about if
he
would like me to leave Chicago? He does, you know. He says he wants me to relocate somewhere else before the baby is born. And I'm pretty sure he's gunning for 'immediately,' rather than later."

"Well, the United States government will be telling him that any relocation won't be happening immediately. I think this whole situation needs a bit of time to shake itself out. If you and Commander Grant are still unhappy with you still living in Chicago a few months from now, then we'll talk again."

Something about Cynthia's tone of voice told me that she was completely finished discussing everything, and when I didn't respond, she wished me well and ended the call.

I didn't see or speak to Desmond the next day, or the next. The day after that, Emma, Jake, and I took a little road trip in my car to visit my grandma in Quincy. The visit went extremely well, with Jake being a very unexpected treat for the care home residents and staff members. My grandma gave him several hugs and lots of kisses on his big, round cheeks, and another woman kept clapping her hands together every so often, saying he was "just beautiful."

Even one elderly man named Marvin, who Eloise sometimes muttered was a "grumpy Gus," seemed tickled by Jake, encouraging him as he lobbed tiny stuffed animals several feet across the room. Before Emma, Jake, and I left, I saw Marvin wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve, telling Eloise that he'd thought his granddaughter would never bring his little great-grandson to visit him ever again.

A while back, Eloise had told me that Marvin's family had stopped visiting him a year earlier, saying that when Marvin didn't recognize them and had angry outbursts related to his Alzheimer's, it was too hard on them.

After being the center of so much attention, Jake immediately passed out on the way home, clutching a tiny stuffed dog. Deciding that this might be a good time to broach the subject of Emma's Gifted troubles with her, I briefly thought about what might be the best way to kind of casually bring them up.

"So, I've been thinking...do you think you might want to-"

"No, Madison. I'm not joining in at the next Gifted practice with you."

Stunned, I glanced over at her. "How do you even know that's what I was going to say?"

"Well, wasn't it?"

"Well...yes."

"Look. I've been waiting for you to ask me to join in. I saw the way you kept looking over at me during your first practice, and then you kept giving me the same kind of looks yesterday. Both practices, you kept looking like you felt bad for me and you wanted me to join in with the group. Which is really nice of you to have that impulse, but I'm not ever joining in, no matter what. I'll never be of use as a Gifted, and I long ago figured that out, so there's no point in me even trying anymore."

"But you said yourself that you were initially successful at levitating...successful enough that someone in your town was able to take video that they sent to the government for a cash reward for having located a Gifted."

Emma shrugged, gaze on the long stretch of road in front of us.

"Yeah. But that didn't last long."

"Well, what happened? Why do you think you lost your power?"

Emma took so long in responding that I started wondering if she was going to or not, but then she finally spoke.

"Basically, here's the story. I was a latent Gifted like you. I found out I was pregnant, and my husband Josh and I were overjoyed. The next day in town, I was grocery shopping for things to make a special celebration meal for us; a little container of cornstarch fell out of the overfull hand-basket thing I was carrying and I accidentally levitated it into my hand while in the process of kneeling down with my hand outstretched to grab it.

“It just sort of...levitated its own self, it felt like. But then, with a bunch of people in the store watching, I levitated a bunch of other things, this time actually trying to. I even levitated a cart full of groceries several feet off the ground and just held it there for probably ten seconds."

"Which, from what I've heard, is a long time for a brand-new Gifted to levitate anything. It sounds like you were pretty good at it."

"Maybe. I don't know."

"So what happened that you couldn't do it anymore?"

Again, Emma hesitated a really long time before responding.

"When I got out to my car with my groceries, I was so happy and excited I was really losing my mind. See, Josh was working as a construction foreman, and I'd recently been let go from my secretarial job for mixing up some very important files for about the fifth time.

“So, money was somewhat tight, and I knew it was about to get a whole lot tighter with a baby coming. But now, that problem was solved. With my income as a Gifted, we'd be just fine, and even while in the grocery store, I was already thinking that I'd ask the government if I could be assigned to Chicago, where so much new construction was taking place, so that Josh could continue his work as a foreman.

“Everything would be perfect. So...excited out of my mind, I called him from right there in the parking lot, and I told him to rush right home from work as soon as he could, because I had something incredible to show him, which was, of course, going to be my levitation power. He asked me to tell him what was going on, but I told him this was something he'd just have to see; so he said he'd be right home."

Still gazing straight ahead on the road, Emma once again paused so long I wondered if she was going to continue.

"So, then what happened?"

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Josh was speeding on the way home...maybe ten miles above the limit, the accident re-constructors said. And somehow, he lost control of his truck and hit a tree. He probably died on impact, they said. After that, the government gave me a whole week to plan and have his funeral and grieve with our family members before taking me away to Chicago...which was, of course, just the place I wanted to be after suddenly losing my husband while pregnant.

“No friends, no family, didn't know a soul...and most people had heard about what had happened and kind of steered clear of me, I guess just because they didn't know how to act around a brand-new widow. Which is part of the reason why I later took it upon myself to become the 'welcoming committee' for new Gifteds.

“I didn't feel exactly unwelcome when I arrived, but no one really went out of their way to welcome me, either. I think people thought that an upbeat, friendly welcome might have been weird or something considering that I was in mourning, or maybe they just thought I wanted to be left alone.

“At any rate, I decided that I was always going to welcome new Gifteds to town with a special lunch visit, just in case nobody else did. That's how Eric and I first met and became friends, by the way. About a month after I'd arrived in town, he came by with lunch, making some joke about how in addition to being Desmond's second-in-command, he was also in charge of making sure all pregnant Gifteds were eating properly or something.

“He probably just felt sorry for me, because after me attending several Gifted practices and just not being able to
do
anything, word had definitely gotten around by that time that I was an absolute failure of a Gifted."