Peekaboo Baby
Delores Fossen
Months after the birth of her son, single mom Delaney Nash discovered a horrible truth: the sperm bank she'd used was under investigation for unethical practices.Complicating matters even further was the very real possibility her son's father was none other than Ryan McCall - her sworn enemy. Suddenly a string of suspicious - and near-fatal - accidents proved that Delaney and her son were in terrible danger.And the only man she could trust to help her uncover the truth was the very same man who was strictly off-limits. And now, in a race against time, could Delaney and Ryan combat danger - and their stormy past - before it was too late?
There was a possibility that this child was his…
Ryan’s first step was to convince Delaney to do the DNA test. The doors of his heart seemed to be opening, and Ryan had no idea how or why they were doing that. Or if he could even close them again. He took a few steps closer toward Delaney and stopped. It was best to keep some physical distance between them since he wasn’t doing great in the emotional distance department.
“I got some news. The New Hope Clinic was located in the hospital where my son died.” Thankfully he’d managed to lay that out without too much emotion in his voice.
Still holding her son, Delaney made a sound of contemplation. “It doesn’t prove anything.”
Ryan turned his head in the baby’s direction and just like that, their gazes connected. His hair was blond. He kicked his chubby legs and grinned.
Ryan’s breath froze in his lungs. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Because he knew…
Peekaboo Baby
Delores Fossen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Imagine a family tree that includes Texas cowboys, Choctaw and Cherokee Indians, a Louisiana pirate and a Scottish rebel who battled side by side with William Wallace. With ancestors like that, it’s easy to understand why Texas author and former U.S. Air Force captain Delores Fossen feels as if she was genetically predisposed to writing romances. Along the way to fulfilling her DNA destiny, Delores married an Air Force Top Gun who just happens to be of Viking descent. With all those romantic bases covered, she doesn’t have to look too far for inspiration.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Delaney Nash—Could the donor embryo she used to give birth to her son, Patrick, be the cloned son of her enemy, Ryan McCall? Now, to keep her son safe, Delaney has to turn to this man she fears could ultimately claim her child, and her heart.
Ryan McCall—Desperate for a second chance to raise his son, Ryan is willing to do whatever it takes to keep Delaney and their baby safe. But risking his heart is something he never expected.
Patrick Nash—The child Delaney always desperately wanted and the son Ryan thought he’d lost. But will Ryan lose Patrick again, this time to a killer?
Dr. Emmett Montgomery—Director of the New Hope fertility clinic and the man who possibly wants to cover up what happened with Delaney’s donor embryo.
Richard Nash—Delaney’s father. Is he so obsessed with getting revenge against Ryan and Delaney that he’s willing to commit murder?
Dr. Bryson Keyes—Delaney’s doctor. He possibly performed illegal cloning experiments that resulted in Patrick’s birth. Now he might want to eliminate any evidence of those experiments, including Ryan, Delaney and Patrick.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter One
San Antonio, Texas
Looking through her rain-spattered windshield, Delaney Nash spotted Dr. Bryson Keyes in the doorway of the private entrance of the New Hope clinic.
Finally.
Soon she’d get answers about what had possibly happened to her son. If Dr. Keyes or one of his associates had done something to harm him…
But she couldn’t even finish that thought.
Her baby had to be all right.
He just had to be.
Delaney blinked back the tears she’d been fighting and watched as Dr. Keyes popped open his oversize charcoal-gray umbrella. Ducking his head against the gusty April wind, he stepped out into the rain and walked toward his car in his personalized space of the parking lot. No doubt his daily routine. Except there was nothing routine about today.
The doctor hadn’t changed much in the thirteen months since she’d last seen him. The same lanky build. The same receding orangy-red hair. Of course, now there was something disturbing about him. But before the questions, before the allegations, Dr. Bryson Keyes had simply been the fertility specialist who’d given her a son, Patrick.
A miracle.
Now, she had to wonder if that miracle was about to become a nightmare.
Delaney got out of her own car, hurrying, and under the meager cover of her own umbrella, she followed Dr. Keyes across the parking lot. The wind and drizzle picked up speed and spit at her, splattering her caramel-colored skirt and probably ruining it in the process. It didn’t matter. Besides, it was a small price to pay to rid her of the questions and doubts that had been tormenting her for the past forty-eight hours.
The thought of the possible answers to those questions knotted her stomach. Again. It caused her heart to slam hard against her chest, and it robbed her of her already too-thin breath. Delaney choked back the worst-case scenarios that kept racing through her head and instead used her determined stride to eat up the distance between Dr. Keyes and her.
Her footsteps, or maybe something else, alerted him, because his head whipped up, and he spun around to face her. His entire body seemed to go stiff, and his watery blue eyes widened with what appeared to be a combination of recognition and concern.
“Ms. Nash,” he said, his words muted because of the relentless slapping of rain on their umbrellas.
“Dr. Keyes.” It took Delaney several moments to tamp down the emotion just so she could speak. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for the past two days.”
He slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and extracted his keys. He checked his watch and gave an impatient glance around the parking lot. “I’ve been busy, and unfortunately I don’t have time to see you now. You can call my office and make an appointment.”
And with that cool, attempted dismissal, the doctor turned to leave. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not until she’d gotten what she came for. Delaney latched on to his arm and held on as if he were her last hope.
Which unfortunately wasn’t too far from the truth.
“I’ve already tried to make an appointment. Several times. Your office claimed you were booked solid,” Delaney accused. “And I don’t think it’s my imagination that you’re trying to avoid me. Guess what? It won’t work.”
He didn’t deny the part about avoiding her. Nor did he offer any polite excuse for why he hadn’t responded to the dozen or so frantic messages she’d left with his secretary and answering service. What he did do was look again uneasily around the parking lot.
“This isn’t a good place to talk,” he informed her.
It was a dismissal, one that riled Delaney to the core, and he no doubt would have left it at that if she hadn’t dug her fingers into his arm and held on. “This might not be a good place to talk, but it’ll have to do. Neither of us is leaving until you explain why a representative from a medical watchdog group—Physicians Against Unethical Practices—called me.”
Oh, that stopped him cold.
Dead cold.
Dr. Keyes met her gaze head-on. Gone were the dismissals and the annoyance at her interruption, and Delaney thought she saw some fear.
An emotion she totally understood.
Because she was afraid.
Terrified, really.
For her son.
And for what might have already happened to him.
“This group contacted you?” Dr. Keyes asked.
Delaney nodded and tried to keep her voice level. Hard to do with the storm of emotions swirling inside her. “They implied that the New Hope clinic would soon be under federal investigation for some kind of illegal medical practices. Is that true?”
And Delaney held what was left of her breath. Waiting. Praying. Hoping that Dr. Keyes would deny it or else explain it all away.
That didn’t happen.
“What did you tell them?” the doctor demanded, and there was no doubt that his question was a demand. His wiry jaw turned to iron.
“Nothing. Because I don’t know anything to tell.” She paused a heartbeat. “But it’s my guess that you do.”
He shrugged, not exactly the declaration of innocence.
Delaney stepped closer, and she was sure her jaw muscles were steely, as well. She also made sure some of that steel crept into her eyes. “Let’s take a little trip down memory lane here. Fifteen months ago I came to New Hope when I found out I was infertile. I desperately wanted a baby, and you arranged for a donor embryo. It worked on the first try. I got pregnant, and I delivered my son four months ago.”
Because she had no choice, Delaney paused to gather her breath and her courage. Because what she had to say would take every ounce of courage that she could marshal. “Now, I’ve learned that the clinic might have done something illegal to the embryo that became my son. Maybe some cellular experiments. DNA manipulation—whatever. Something that could perhaps make him sick…or worse.”
No amount of strength could have stopped the tears that sprang to her eyes. Hot tears that burned against the cool rain speckling her lashes. Delaney fought the tears, and lost. The fear and dread were overwhelming.
Dr. Keyes or someone else at the clinic might have used her son as a guinea pig, and those experiments might have irreversible long-term effects.
“I have to think about this,” Dr. Keyes said. He gestured toward his car. “I’ll be in touch.”
Delaney caught the front of his jacket and wadded up the fabric so she had a firm grip. “You’ll tell me what you know now,” she said through clenched teeth. “Did you do something to my son?”
He mumbled something under his breath. Cursed. And looked as if he would prefer to be in the deepest pit of hell rather than talking to her.
Seconds crawled by, with the rain pelting them, and Delaney wasn’t sure the doctor would even answer her. She had no idea what she would do if he didn’t. Still, she was desperate, and she’d use that desperation to get him to talk.
“Any idea if the watchdog group contacted Ryan McCall as well?” Dr. Keyes asked.
The question caused her stomach to land in the vicinity of her knees.
Of all the things she’d anticipated the doctor might say, that wasn’t one of them.
“Ryan McCall?” Delaney managed to repeat. Not easily though. The man’s name always seemed to stick like wet clay in her throat. “Why would they contact him about illegal medical practices at the New Hope clinic? He has nothing to do with any of this.”
Judging from the panicky stare that Dr. Keyes gave her, and from his suddenly wobbling Adam’s apple, he thought differently.
Well, he was wrong.
He had to be.
Her old nemesis, Ryan McCall, had no connection to her son. None. McCall was a different part of her past. A past she dearly wanted to forget. Of course, forgetting wasn’t entirely possible. Every time she heard her father’s accusing voice and saw his scarred wrists, she got a harsh reminder that Ryan McCall, one of the most affluent and ruthless businessmen in the state, had tried to destroy her family.
And in many ways, he’d succeeded.
Heck, he was still succeeding.
“Look,” Dr. Keyes grumbled. “Let’s get in my car. It’s probably not a good idea for us to stand out here discussing this. The watchdog group employs P.I.s. They could have followed you.”
Delaney stayed put. “Answers,” she demanded. “Now. And quit stalling.”
His suddenly intense, almost angry stare drilled into her. “You’re really going to wish you’d sat down for this,” Keyes warned, his voice now a dangerous growl.
Delaney wasn’t immune to the warning and that stare. Even though she hadn’t thought it possible, it sent her adrenaline soaring even higher than it already was. Still, she didn’t back down. She couldn’t. No matter how painful this was, she had to learn the truth.
“Start talking,” Delaney countered, trying to show strength that she in no way felt. Her legs were shaking so hard she was afraid she might lose her balance. “Because if you don’t, I’m going straight to the police. I’ll demand a full investigation, and I’ll tell them to start that investigation with you.”
He stared at her. “And if I tell you what you think you want to know?”
“Then, it ends here.”
She hoped.
Mercy, it had to end here.
Dr. Keyes gave a curt, brace-yourself nod. “I believe an embryologist who used to work at the clinic might have done some experimental research on asexually replicated cells.”
Delaney mentally repeated that. She understood the individual words, but the term, asexually replicated cells, meant nothing to her. “Try that again in English.”
He opened his mouth and closed it, as if rethinking what he was about to say. Then he shook his head. “The embryologist, William Spears, died about three weeks ago. His records are apparently missing now, and I only got a glimpse of them beforehand, so I’m not exactly sure what he did. I’m not even sure if the embryo you were given was part of his research. In fact, I’m not sure of anything. I only learned what he’d done after he was dead—and that means I’m innocent of any charges this watchdog group might bring against the clinic.”
Using the grip she still had on his jacket, Delaney hauled him closer. “Frankly, I don’t care what part you had in this. All I care about is my son. I need to make sure he’s all right, that someone didn’t manipulate or mutate the embryo so that it could end up harming him.”
That improved his posture. “Is there something wrong with your son?”
“Not that I know of. That’s why I’m here. I want to make sure there’s nothing lurking in his DNA that could turn out to be a deadly time bomb.”
“No time bomb.” More hesitation. Another check around the parking lot. “I don’t believe your son’s DNA was altered.”
The breath of relief instantly formed in her lungs and then stalled there, because that wasn’t a relief-generating look on the doctor’s face. “Then what did you do to him?”
“Me personally? Nothing.” He groaned and kicked at the puddle of rain that was deepening around their feet. “Asexually replicated cells aren’t mutated or altered. They’re just that—asexually reproduced.”
Delaney wished she’d paid more attention in her Biology 101 class at Texas A&M. She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Dr. Keyes lowered his voice to a whisper. “Your son’s embryo was cloned.”
She pulled in her breath. “Cloned?” The grip she had on the doctor’s jacket melted away, and Delaney’s hand dropped to her side.
“Yes. I only got a quick look at Dr. Spears’s records, but he claims to have taken the DNA from a six-week-old male infant who died two years ago right here in San Antonio in an automobile accident that killed both the baby and his mother.”
A sickening feeling of dread came over her.
Two years ago.
A car accident.
A child and mother left dead.
Delaney was positive there’d been plenty of other accidents, other deaths during that time frame. But only one incident came to mind.
“It’s possible that you might have received the cloned embryo from that infant,” Dr. Keyes said.
Delaney felt herself stagger, and because she had no choice, she leaned against a nearby car.
An experimentally cloned embryo.
The genetic copy of a child who had already been born.
And died.
Delaney tried to respond, tried to question that. She tried to accuse Dr. Keyes of lying. Yes, that was it. He had to be lying. But she couldn’t make herself say anything. Her throat clamped shut, and the tightness in her chest squeezed like a fist.
“If the information in that record is correct,” the doctor continued. He waited until Delaney’s eyes came back to his. “Then, the child you gave birth to is Ryan McCall’s son.”
Chapter Two
Ryan McCall cursed the storm. It was a brutal reminder of the gaping wound that just wouldn’t heal.
The rain had been relentless, going on for hours. And each new assault against the massive floor-to-ceiling windows of his office drew him out of the concentration that he was fighting hard to maintain.
Concentration he desperately needed tonight.
Ryan tried—again—to lose himself in the quarterly business projections for his company, McCall Industries. A vital report. One he needed to absorb and study so he could give input to his department heads. It worked. Well, it worked for a minute or two anyway. And then there was another wave of rain. Another burst of wind.
Another stir of painful memories he didn’t want.
It had rained the afternoon of the accident two years ago. Violent weather, violent consequences. The connection wasn’t logical, but it was there nonetheless. Ryan considered it a battle to fight, and win.
Eventually.
That’s why he didn’t close the curtains. One way or another, he would conquer this particular demon just as he’d conquered all the others in his life.
The buzzing sound of the intercom echoed through the room only seconds before he heard the familiar voice of his household manager, Lena Sanchez. “Sorry to interrupt you, boss, but you have a visitor at the front gate.”
Ryan automatically checked the antique Seth Thomas clock on the polished-stone-and-mahogany mantel. It was just after seven-thirty. Not late, but since his estate wasn’t exactly on the beaten path, it was hardly the hour for an unexpected guest. And an unwanted one. Ryan didn’t have to know the person’s identity to determine that. Anyone was unwanted at this point. He was not in a receiving-visitors kind of mood.
“It’s Delaney Nash,” Lena added, sounding concerned. “And she said it’s important.”
That captured Ryan’s attention.
Tossing the report aside, he reached over, accessed the security feed on his computer and zoomed in on the wrought-iron gate that fronted his estate. Even through the thick gray rain and the dusky light, he had no trouble spotting the blue car. Or the woman sitting behind the wheel. Her window was halfway down, and she was staring blankly at the intercom and security camera, apparently waiting for Lena to open the gate so she could visit.
Even though Ryan knew her name as well as his own, he’d yet to meet Delaney Nash, the woman he’d spoken to and corresponded with too many times to count. That didn’t mean he wanted their first meeting to happen tonight. Still, there was something about her ashen face and shell-shocked stare that had him reconsidering if he would let her in.
She looked upset. And her shoulder-length coffee-colored hair was plastered against her head and cheeks. She’d obviously had a run-in with the rain, and she didn’t look any more pleased about her encounter with the precipitation than he was.
“What does she want?” Ryan asked Lena.
“She said it was personal. That she urgently needed to speak to you.”
Of course it was personal. It couldn’t be anything but. Old scores to settle and all of that. And the urgent part? Well, that was expected, too. Things always seemed urgent when it came to the Nash family.
This little visit was no doubt about her father. Maybe he’d attempted suicide again. Or maybe Richard Nash had filed yet another frivolous lawsuit to right the wrong that he felt had been done to him. Either way, it couldn’t be good.
“She’s probably here to try to kill me,” Ryan mumbled under his breath.
And it wasn’t a joke.
A thought like that should normally have elicited fear or at least a sense of dread, but it’d been a while since he’d felt fear. That could happen when a man had lost everything: the woman he loved and their child.
There was literally nothing left for him to fear.
Or lose.
What he’d dreaded most had already happened.
“Open the gate,” Ryan instructed Lena. “Show her in.”
At least Delaney Nash would be a distraction from the storm. Sad but true. He preferred to face an irate, possibly homicidal, adversary than deal with the blasted conditioned responses caused by the weather.
“Lena, do a quick background check on Ms. Nash,” Ryan added, because, while he didn’t mind the distraction, he preferred to be informed. Especially if Ms. Nash had come with murder on her mind. “I haven’t kept tabs on her or her father in a while.”
“Sure, boss.”
Ryan watched as the gates slid open. Delaney Nash wasted no time. Once she had adequate space, she gunned the engine and started the half-mile uphill drive that would bring her to his doorstep.
He winced when she took one of the curves way too fast. Her tires skidded through slick asphalt, and for a second, one horrible gut-tightening second, Ryan thought she might lose control of her vehicle and crash into the massive oaks that lined the road.
She didn’t.
No frantic flash of brake lights. She simply slowed down until she finally came to a stop in the covered entryway of the main house.
“Delaney Elizabeth Nash,” Lena said through the intercom. One of the servants opened the front door and escorted his visitor inside. “She’s twenty-nine, lives in San Antonio. No police record. She owns a day-care center—small but apparently thriving.”
Nothing new. Ryan was already aware of those details. “Anything recent on her or her father?”
Ryan gave the security feed another adjustment so he could follow Ms. Nash’s little journey through the foyer and onto the wide spiraling stairs that would take her eventually to his office. Unlike other visitors, not once did she stop or even glance at her surroundings. She kept her attention pinned straight ahead. Zombielike.
Or so he thought.
Until Ryan zoomed in on her face. Definitely not zombie material. She was determined. Which meant his theory about her being there to kill him might not be so far off the mark.
He glanced at the purse she was practically hugging to her chest. Did she have a gun in there? More importantly, had she come prepared to use it? Maybe something had set her off and brought their old feud back to the surface.
“She had a baby four months ago,” Lena continued. “A son named Patrick Thomas Nash.”
Interesting. Not just because he’d never thought of her as the motherly type but because the child had the same surname as hers. “So she’s not married?”
“No.”
“Save any further details for later,” Ryan said to Lena when the servant knocked at his office door.
It was showtime.
“Should I monitor this visit?” Lena asked.
Monitor. As in keep a close watch through the security cameras in case Ms. Nash went ballistic. “No. I expect this won’t take long.” And in a louder voice, he instructed Ms. Nash to enter.
The door opened. Slowly. And even though there was no eerie creaking sound from the hinges, the room suddenly seemed to take on the ambiance of a horror movie in which the rain and wind battered the glass and a woman, who no doubt hated him enough to kill him, was slowly revealed.
While she stood in the doorway, with the richly stained mahogany framing her, her gaze slid around the room until it landed on him. Only then did she take a step inside. Not a cautious and calculating step, either. She entered with the same determination that she’d had on her trek up the stairs.
He’d been right about the rain doing a real number on her. Her jacket and slim above-the-knee skirt were blotched. There wasn’t a dry spot on her hair, and not much left of her makeup. Nothing except a trace of peach-colored lipstick.
And she looked as if she’d been crying.
That sent a weird curl of emotion through him. It was such a foreign feeling, one he hadn’t had in a long time, that it took Ryan a moment to identify it. But those tear-reddened, jade-green eyes brought out more than a few protective instincts in his body.
Whoa.
That was a truly stupid reaction.
Because Delaney Nash certainly wasn’t feeling protective toward him.
“Did your father send you?” Ryan asked in an effort to change his train of thought.
She blinked, as if shocked by his question. And her shock surprised Ryan, because he’d been almost certain this visit was about Richard Nash.
“This has nothing to do with my father.”
She walked closer, her thin, delicate heels clicking like heartbeats on the hardwood floor, and stopped in front of his desk. She took a deep breath and released it slowly. So slowly that it caused her bottom lip to tremble. “I have a favor to ask.”
Yet another surprise, and one that had probably cost her an ample amount of Nash pride. She would no doubt rather eat razor blades than come to him for a favor. Or for anything.
“What do you want?” Ryan tried to sound nonchalant but figured he failed. He was anything but nonchalant. This rain-soaked woman, his enemy, had piqued his curiosity.
Among other things.
That trembling bottom lip and her teary eyes were touching places in his heart that he never wanted touched again. Realizing what was happening, Ryan did a detach. He took a mental step back, put on his best corporate sneer and gave her a callous go-ahead prompt with his hand.
She nodded, nodded again and swallowed hard. “I need to see a picture of your son.”
Well, that shot the hell out of his corporate sneer and mental step back. He couldn’t stay detached after that. Ryan leaned forward. “Excuse me?”
“I went to the library and looked through all the old newspapers.” A raindrop slipped from the ends of her hair and spattered on his desk. She immediately reached down to wipe it away. “But there wasn’t a picture of him.”
Because Ryan had refused to give one to the papers. He hadn’t wanted anyone, especially strangers, to see his infant son. It was a grief, a hurt so deep, that Ryan hadn’t wanted to share it.
He still didn’t.
“Why?” he asked, aware that the one word encompassed a lot. Not the least of which, he figured it would generate an explanation. Not necessarily a good explanation. Because after all, this was the daughter of a mentally unstable man who’d repeatedly threatened to kill him.
“You won’t believe me if I tell you.”
“Try,” Ryan insisted.
Her fingers were white-knuckled in their grip on her purse. “Could I please just see his picture? I might be able to save us both a lot of time.”
Well, the woman certainly knew how to captivate him. And no, it didn’t have anything to do with her vulnerability.
All right, maybe it did.
A little.
But it was a problem that he’d soon remedy. Feelings and emotions carried high price tags, and he didn’t intend to go there again. Ever. And even if he decided to ease up on that rule a bit, he wouldn’t have been looking in Delaney Nash’s direction.
“Please,” she said, her voice and bottom lip trembling again.
Ryan stared at her while he debated it. And what a debate it was. Why did she want to see a picture of Adam? Why the vague save-us-some-time excuse?
And why the heck was he even considering her bizarre request?
He didn’t owe her a damn thing. She and her father had done everything humanly possible to drag his name through the mud. And all because he’d bested Richard Nash in a business deal.
So what.
He’d bested a lot of people, and they hadn’t made death threats or tried to sue him. The old analogy of “if you can’t stand the heat” came to mind. Richard Nash obviously couldn’t, but instead of getting his wimpy butt out of the kitchen, he’d spent the past year and a half trying to get revenge.
Ryan mentally rehashed the past, and while he was at it, he took a few moments to reflect on the woman standing in front of him. And somewhere amid all of that soul-searching, he felt his hand move in the direction of his top right desk drawer.
He didn’t look at the object he extracted. He couldn’t. It might be acceptable for her to show her vulnerable side, but Ryan didn’t intend to reciprocate.
His heart would break all over again if he looked at that picture of his son. And this time, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to survive it.
Keeping his attention fastened to her eyes, Ryan handed her the photo encased in the gold-gilded frame. She didn’t look at the image, either. She kept her attention on him, shifted her purse beneath her arm and took the picture, her fingers closing around it as if it were made of delicate crystal that might shatter in her hand.
She mumbled something. A prayer, maybe, then looked down at the photo.
Her eyes widened, her breath stopped, and she brought the picture closer. Studying it. Really studying it. Mere inches from her face.
“Oh, God. Oh. God. He’s so small,” she said, her voice a breathy whisper. Her bottom lip didn’t quiver. It began to shake.
She began to shake.
And she adjusted her purse again so that it was in front of her chest.
“Yes.” Ryan had to swallow hard before he could continue. Not just because of her extreme reaction, but because he didn’t need the image in front of him to visualize his son’s face. It was there. Always there. Burned into his memory and his heart. “Adam was born ten weeks premature.”
We almost lost him, Ryan nearly added.
It was an automatic addendum he’d used often in those first days after Adam’s birth and his stay in the neonatal unit. Those words had proved to be all too prophetic.
Because they had lost him.
“When the accident happened,” Ryan added. He cleared his throat, but it didn’t help. “My son had only been out of the hospital a few days.”
And Ryan was suddenly so sorry he’d opened all of this again. Hoping to undo his mistake, he reached out, snatched the picture from her, put it back where it belonged and slammed the drawer.
“All right. Observation time’s over. Start talking. Why are you here, Ms. Nash?”
She shook her head in an almost frantic gesture. “It’s hard to tell from the picture. You’d think it’d be easy, but it isn’t. It isn’t easy at all.”
Because she looked and sounded on the verge of losing it, and because he wasn’t stupid, he stood and grabbed her purse. She made a sound of surprise, part gasp, part outrage, but Ryan didn’t let that stop him. He rifled through the leather bag to see if she’d indeed brought a gun with her.
No gun.
Just the normal things that might be found in a woman’s purse. A wallet, keys, comb, pen and some toiletry items. Oh, and a blue pacifier in a clear plastic case.
Hardly the tools of a would be killer.
She grabbed her bag from him and put it back as a shield in front of her. But not before he saw the circular wet splotch around her left breast. Specifically, the blotch centered around the somewhat prominent outline of her nipple. Her focus followed his to see what had captured his attention, and she actually blushed.
“I nurse my son,” she said, obviously not comfortable with the topic. “And I’m late for his feeding.”
Ryan wasn’t exactly comfortable with it either, but there wasn’t anything comfortable about this visit. “Then, maybe you should go to your baby instead of being here?”
“The sitter gave him a bottle. I called her on the drive over.”
And that brought the conversation to a temporary grinding halt. It took a moment for Ryan to ask what he knew he had to ask. “Why did you react that way to my son’s picture?”
She shrugged in a sort of dismissal that didn’t change anything. Every muscle in her face was tight and doing battle with each other. “It doesn’t matter. Dr. Keyes can’t be right.”
Ryan took a moment to try to process her mumblings and that name, but there was nothing in his memory to process. “Who the hell is Dr. Keyes?”
“The fertility specialist I used. I can’t have a child on my own. I had to use a donor embryo to become pregnant with my son.”
“So?” Ryan said, since he had no idea what else to say. This little talk had taken a bad turn somewhere, and he didn’t think it would get back on track anytime soon. Still, he wasn’t about to send her on her way until he learned what this visit was all about.
“So, Dr. Keyes…” She paused, and what little color she had drained from her face. She stared at him. Well, in his direction anyway. Long moments. But Ryan wasn’t sure she was seeing him at all. She seemed to be involved in her own private, intense debate that occupied all of her mental energy.
“I have to go,” she said.
She whirled around and had made it halfway to the door before Ryan could catch up with her. He stepped in front of her to block her path so she couldn’t leave.
“Finish that thought about Dr. Keyes,” he insisted.
He saw more of that intense debate, and she must not have cared much for the conclusion she silently drew. “There’s no reason to finish it. I’m sorry I bothered you. I’m sorry for everything.”
Again, she started for the door. Tried to step around him. But Ryan did some maneuvering of his own until they were face-to-face. Since she was easily five-nine and was wearing heels, they were practically eye-to-eye, as well.
He caught her scent. Not just her rain-soaked clothes, either. Her scent. Something rich and female. Like her tears and her trembling lip, it awakened responses inside him that he’d long since buried.
And he intended for them to stay buried, too.
It was a man-woman thing, he assured himself. And it felt more intense than it actually was because he’d gone so long without sex. His thirty-two-year-old body was simply urging him in a direction he had no intention of going.
Ryan pushed her scent and his primal response aside and stared at her. “Talk,” he ordered.
“Trust me, you don’t want to hear this.”
And judging from her adamant tone, he believed her. But that didn’t stop him. “Tell me anyway.”
She gave a weary sigh, and her head dropped down. “Dr. Keyes thought maybe my donor embryo… Well, he thought it might have been cloned.”
“Say what?” Because Ryan had to know what was going on in her eyes, he cupped her chin and lifted it.
He didn’t like what he saw.
She was afraid. That fear didn’t do much to calm his own suddenly raw nerves.
Her lashes fluttered down, or rather tried to, but she fought it and maintained eye contact with him. “Dr. Keyes believes I might have given birth to a cloned embryo of your son.”
Chapter Three
The moment Delaney heard her own words, a cloned embryo of your son, she realized what a stupid mistake it’d been to come to Ryan McCall’s estate.
Mercy, what had she done?
She’d let the exhaustion, fear and her quest for the truth gnaw away at her, and it had obviously damaged her common sense.
Delaney pulled back her shoulders. She had to get out of there, and she wouldn’t wait for her host’s permission, either. She stepped around him and started walking.
Ryan McCall reached out, fast, and slammed the door in her face. Not only that, he squeezed himself into the meager space between the door and her, blocking her exit.
“Did you think I wouldn’t want an explanation after a bombshell like that?” he challenged.
“That’s the problem—I didn’t think. And I shouldn’t have come,” Delaney countered, hoping it would suffice.
It didn’t.
When she reached for the doorknob, he snagged her wrist. Alarmed at the physical restraint, she stared at the grip he had on her and then snapped her gaze to his face. She had seen that face a hundred times in the newspapers, and yet he didn’t look much like those images that were often plastered in the business section.
Oh, the confidence and the renowned aloofness were there, etched in those glacier-blue eyes. In that almost harshly angled olive-tinged face. Those attributes were even there in his slightly too long but fashionably cut sandy-blond hair. Brad Pitt meets The Terminator. But what the photos had failed to capture were the small things that made him human.
There were tiny lines at the corners of his eyes. Worry lines. And his mouth was tight. Almost rigid. As if it’d been a long time since he’d smiled.
Thinking of Ryan McCall as human, however, would be yet another mistake, and she’d already made enough of those.
Inside, she was feeling a lot of things. Foolishness for believing this visit would actually alleviate her fears. Anger, mostly directed at herself, for thinking he might have answers. And a sickening dread that all of this could turn even uglier than it already had.
“Explain Dr. Keyes,” he pressed. “A cloned embryo of my son. And finally, your ‘Dr. Keyes can’t be right’ comment.”
Delaney stared at him and considered the few options that she had. Clamming up until he backed down was one, but he didn’t look like the backing-down type. She studied his eyes.
No. Ryan McCall definitely wouldn’t let her walk away from this.
A second option was to sling off his grip and try to muscle her way out of there. She was fairly good in her kickboxing class, but in a physical battle with this man she’d probably lose big-time. Ryan McCall had a good four inches on her and outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. Judging from the fit of his azure-blue pullover shirt and black pants, that fifty pounds didn’t include much body fat, either.
Of course, her final option was to tell him the truth. There was just one problem with that. She didn’t know the truth. Still, he was right. She’d barged into his home. She’d demanded to see a photo of his son, and then she was trying to leave without so much as an explanation. If their situations had been reversed, she’d be blocking his exit exactly the way he was blocking hers.
Figuring she would need it, Delaney drew in a long breath. “Two days ago, a representative from a medical watchdog group called me. He said the New Hope clinic that I used to become pregnant might have done some illegal medical experiments. This group was compiling data so they could request that the Justice Department conduct an investigation.”
Judging from his silence, he was considering her words. “Did this representative have any proof of the allegations?”
“If he did, he didn’t share it with me. He asked about the procedure I’d had done, and when he mentioned that the clinic might have altered embryos, I talked to Dr. Keyes. Keyes wasn’t sure, but he claims a late embryologist might have done some experiments, and that I might have received… Well, you know.”
He pondered what she said. “Keyes could be lying.”
“He could be.” And Delaney would have welcomed the lie. It was far easier than the possible consequences of the truth. “But why would he? Why admit that he has some knowledge about a possible felony?”
His eyes met hers, as had happened several times during the conversation. But for some reason, his scrutinizing regard was even more unnerving than it had been before. It took her a moment to figure out why. They were so close they were practically touching.
Oh.
They were touching, she realized.
At least their clothes were. His pants leg was right against her skirt. He was warm. She wasn’t. And she felt his warmth all the way through her cool, damp clothes. Since that violated her personal space and then some, she took a huge step back.
The corner of his mouth lifted a fraction. Definitely not a smile. But maybe amusement that she would object to something so small when they had something so large to deal with.
“This Dr. Keyes could be after money,” he pointed out.
“You mean some sort of blackmail or extortion? Yes, I considered that, but he made no demands. In fact, he didn’t even want to talk to me.”
“That still doesn’t rule out money.”
And the brusque way he said it had Delaney looking beyond their present thread of conversation. “Are we discussing my father now?”
He lifted his right eyebrow just a fraction. “You tell me.”
He certainly had a way of riling her. And that particular ability sliced right through all the fear and dread. “Then, no, we’re not discussing him.”
His eyebrow went even higher. “It wouldn’t be the first time he’s tried to get money from me.”
Delaney really didn’t want to go there tonight, but it was obvious that Ryan McCall did. “Look, this isn’t about our past. And it’s not about my father.”
He leaned in. Another personal space violation. “It’s always about your father.”
That was something she couldn’t refute. She would forever associate the man standing in front of her with the hostile takeover of her father’s manufacturing company. And she’d always associate that with her father’s attempted suicide. That was a year and a half ago, and her father had been under psychiatric care ever since. He probably always would be.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg.
There would also be the anger and blame, which her father aimed not only at Ryan McCall but at her, as well. Simply put, her father detested her. He held her partly responsible for his lost business because he felt she hadn’t done more to stop it. And she could in turn put the blame for that squarely on Mr. McCall’s rather ample shoulders.
McCall stepped to the side, clearing her way to the door. “By the way, I don’t believe you.”
Good. And her reaction would have probably stayed that way while she made her exit.
If he hadn’t continued.
“Just how much money did your father ask you to extort from me?”
Delaney took a step, retraced it and glared at McCall over her shoulder. Part of her knew she should just let it go, but the man had successfully pushed another of her buttons. “Not a cent. And if you think my father would send me here to get anything from you, then you obviously know nothing about either of us.”
This time, she actually made it out the door and into the massive hall outside his office.
“Your reaction to my son’s picture was a nice touch,” he taunted. “The little fluttery breath. The oh, God. You must have figured if you could convince me that you had given birth to my son, then I’d hand over everything I own to get him back. The ultimate blackmail scheme. You father would get his revenge, and you’d both be filthy rich. Emphasis on the filthy.”
The accusation stung, because there was no way she’d use her son to get back at him. Or anyone. But the wrongful accusation wouldn’t stop her from leaving. Delaney hurried toward the stairs.
“Was I supposed to believe that you recognized something in my son’s photo?” he called out. “Or maybe a better question would be—what did you pretend to see?”
He was wrong.
That wasn’t the better question.
The better question was why had that tiny face seemed familiar? So familiar that it’d made her body respond in the most basic maternal way. She’d felt the slight contraction of her breasts and then the letdown of her milk. A preparation for nursing.
A normal response…as if she’d been looking at the face of her own son.
“HELL,” Ryan grumbled.
From the top of the stairs, he watched Delaney Nash race out the front door. Even in heels and a skirt, she was fast. Not exactly the behavior of a lying, scheming woman who had extortion or other unsavory acts on her mind. In fact, it seemed as if his accusations had genuinely upset her.
And that upset him.
Despite his cutthroat reputation and “iceman” moniker that his business cohorts had dubbed him with, he didn’t get off by hurting people.
Cursing himself and her visit, Ryan barreled down the stairs after her. He didn’t know whether to hope she’d already driven away, or that she was still there.
Fate settled it for him.
She was still there.
Delaney had made it back to her car, which was parked under the portico of the circular driveway. She was definitely trying to leave, but her car wasn’t cooperating. With each turn of the key, the engine made a clicking moan. A dead battery maybe.
She tried again. And again. Before she finally smacked her hand, hard, against the steering wheel. Her shoulders slumped, and her head dropped back onto the headrest of the seat. Then she glanced up at the ceiling as if begging for divine assistance.
Ryan walked down the flagstone steps. He knew his movement had drawn her attention because her eyes flew in his direction. For a split second he saw her sheer frustration before she replaced it with a scowl.
He deserved that scowl.
Ryan went to the driver’s side of her vehicle, and when she didn’t open the door, he reached for the handle. She in turn reached for the lock, but he was slightly quicker than she was. Before she could lock him out, he eased open the door and faced a seriously riled woman.
“You know, most people would have gotten mad and called me a name or two if I’d accused them of attempted extortion,” he commented.
Her scowl got worse. “Believe me, I considered a little name-calling.”
“It’s not too late.” He suppressed a wince when lightning zigzagged across the sky. The thunder followed, so loud that it vibrated the roof of the portico. “A lot of people go for jackass, but it’s a little overused. How about SOB? It’s short and to the point.”
She stared at him. “If you’re trying to be funny, or charming, you’re failing.”
“What I’m trying to do…” He had to stop because he had no idea what the heck he was trying to do. Yes, he did owe her a semiapology, but he was going beyond that. He was now somewhere in the uncomfortable realm of attempting to soothe her ruffled feathers.
But she was right.
He was failing.
Huffing, he looked at his household manager, Lena, who was standing in the gaping doorway of the estate. “Have a car brought to the front,” Ryan instructed. And because of the storm, he really hated this next part, but after what he’d just put his visitor through, it was something he felt he had to do. “I’ll drive Ms. Nash home.”
“No, thanks,” he heard Delaney say. “I’ll call a taxi.” Her statement wasn’t a suggestion.
Ryan reached across her and placed his hand over hers when she went for the phone nestled between the seats. Not the brightest move he’d ever made. The close confines of the car were, well, close.
Her breath met his.
And Ryan took in more of her than he’d intended. Nothing minty fresh but surprisingly appealing. There it was again. Attraction.
No, wait.
Lust.
He preferred that term. Good old basic lust. It kept things on a purely physical level.
“We’re over twenty miles from San Antonio,” he explained. “On a country road, no less. It’s dark and storming. It’ll take a taxi a half hour or more just to get here. I could have you home by then.”
He waited for her to debate that.
He also pulled back his hand, and the rest of his body, since being so close really didn’t seem like a good idea. Even if it sort of felt right.
Strange.
Why did he have this sudden need to comfort the woman? All she’d done was bring turmoil to his life.
As if he needed more.
Ryan didn’t believe her speculation about what had gone on at the fertility clinic. Not that he thought she’d made up the whole thing. No, she was experiencing too much distress for that. The person he doubted was this Dr. Keyes, and before the night was over, Ryan would find out any- and everything he could about the man.
“Well?” Ryan pressed when one of the servants drove a car beneath the portico and parked directly behind Delaney. “You can have a ride, or you can wait. Your choice. My advice is to put aside your resentment and take the ride. That way, you can get home to your son as soon as possible.”
That defused the argument he saw in all those shades of green in her eyes, and for the first time since he’d made the offer to take her home, Ryan knew she truly was considering it.
“Thank you,” she mumbled.
And then she looked directly at him and repeated the words in a sincere voice.
That impressed him. Why, he didn’t know, and Ryan was tired of trying to rationalize his reaction to her. Plain and simple, they just weren’t making sense. But then, lust rarely did.
Delaney got out and followed him to the other vehicle. “I’ll arrange to have my car towed.”
“No hurry.” Ryan waited until they were both inside before he continued. “My driver has the night off, but if he can fix it in the morning, I’ll have him bring it out to you.”
She gave him a considering stare and fastened her seat belt. “Let’s get something straight. I appreciate the ride—I really do—but I’d prefer if you didn’t try to be nice to me.”
Ryan nodded, actually understanding, and he started the car and drove away.
Sheesh.
His heart actually started to race.
“Well, I suppose I could try to accuse you of a few more crimes,” he joked. Not because he felt jovial but because his voice partly covered up the sounds of the storm. “That’d keep things from being nice.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “I’d prefer no chitchat, either.”
Okay. So his diversion had struck out for both of them. “Fair enough. After all, we’re not exactly in a chitchat relationship, are we?”
“No,” she quickly agreed.
But they were in some sort of relationship. An odd one but a relationship all the same. That strangeness had begun with her impromptu visit and had bumped up a few notches with her reaction to Adam’s picture.
“For the record, I don’t believe the technology exists for cloning a human embryo,” Ryan said. “And even if it did, why would a clinic steal the DNA needed for the embryo? Egos being what they are, I’m sure there would be plenty of volunteers who’d want to replicate themselves.”
He waited, going back over his argument and hoping it made sense.
“You’re right,” she said, sounding relieved. But not totally convinced.
Ryan was on the same page with her.
If, and it was huge if, the medical staff wanted to cover up an illegal cloning procedure, they might use whatever DNA they had available. Plus, they might not want to use genetic material that could be traced back to anyone specifically. In other words, it possibly made sense to use a deceased donor.
Hell.
That put a rock-hard knot in his stomach. He couldn’t bear the thought that anyone had used his son for medical experiments. It reopened the nightmare all over again. The pain of losing Adam and his wife was suddenly as fresh, as brutal, as it had been that stormy afternoon of the accident.
He tried—and failed—to stop the memories. The slow-motion, dreamlike feel of the call from the hospital. His frantic arrival. Ryan remembered the sterile smell, the look of pity on the ER doctor’s face. First, the doctor had pronounced his son dead, and then fifteen minutes later, his wife had lost her own fight for life. The entire time lapse between that first call and those last words was less than an hour.
And in those minutes, Ryan’s life had changed forever.
“I’m sorry,” he heard Delaney say.
For a second he was afraid he’d voiced his grief aloud and that she was offering him sympathy. He could handle a lot of things, but sympathy wasn’t one of them. He preferred her venom to that.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she continued. So no sympathy. At least none expressed anyway. Merely a further explanation of her visit. “Not without proof, and proof is something I’ll never get, because this has all been just a really bad scare.”
A really bad scare?
Not exactly his take on things.
A scare maybe for her because, as a parent, she’d no doubt wonder if the hypothetical cloning had done anything to harm her son. However, for Ryan the whole ordeal hadn’t been as much of a scare as it had been a huge setback to his healing. For one moment, one too-short moment, he’d considered the possibility that Adam was alive, that he’d been given a second chance.
A chance that was snatched away once reality set in.
Because there were no second chances.
Now, what was left was the aftermath, and Ryan knew that the aftermath was the hard part. In fact, the only thing harder was the question he’d been aching to ask her.
“Does Adam resemble your son?”
He waited.
Held his breath.
And would have prayed if he’d known what to pray for.
It obviously wasn’t an easy question for Delaney. She sat there in silence. The only sound was the rhythmic slap of the wipers, the rain and their uneven breathing.
“It’s hard to say,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “In that picture, your son was so tiny. Mine was born full-term. Eight pounds, seven ounces. He had chubby cheeks. Still does,” Delaney added in a whisper.
Full-term. One of the joys of parenthood that Ryan had never gotten to experience. But then, Adam’s life had been so short, that neither he nor his son had experienced a lot of things.
While he gave her answer some thought, he tested the high beams of his headlights, but they merely bounced back the reflection of the rain. Ryan switched back to low beams and fastened his attention on the dark, slick road that would take them to the highway.
“You don’t happen to have a picture of your son, do you?” Ryan asked.
“No.” Her response was as fast as the bolt of lightning that slashed on the horizon in front of them.
She was lying.
And she was really bad at it.
Her voice actually cracked. There was, no doubt, a picture or two tucked inside her wallet. What new mother wouldn’t carry around photos of her baby? Still, Ryan had no intentions of calling her on that lie. In a way, he welcomed it. Because if he saw a photo of her son, he’d scrutinize it and pick it apart until he forced himself to see something. Anything. That would only cause the hope to grow.
There was no room left in his heart for hope.
“I don’t know if my father ever contacts you,” she said. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan watched her twist the trio of rings she had on her thumb, pinkie and middle fingers of her right hand. The one on her middle finger had a tiny jeweled butterfly charm dangling from it. “But if he does, I’d prefer that you not mention anything about this visit.”
“Your father only contacts me through his lawyers. And the last thing I’d discuss with him or anyone else is what happened tonight.”
“Thank you.” She paused and did more of that nervous fidgeting with her fingers. Delicate fingers. For that matter, a delicate face. Not drop-dead gorgeous, but attractive in a woman-next-door sort of way. Unfortunately, he found that appealing.
Even though that hadn’t been the case until tonight.
“But you will check up on Dr. Keyes and the embryologist, won’t you?” Delaney asked.
“Absolutely. If there’s some kind of scam, I’ll find out.”
She blew out a long breath, probably not from relief. By now, she was probably kicking herself for even coming to the estate.
He understood how she felt.
There was another flash of lightning, and as the white-hot spear sliced through the darkness, Ryan thought he saw something on the road just ahead. A shadow, maybe. Maybe one of the horses had gotten out of the pasture. He automatically leaned in closer to the windshield, trying to look through the rain and the murky night to determine what it was.
But it was too late.
The dark-colored car came out of the thick curtain of rain. Not on the other side of the road, either.
Right at them.
Ryan heard Delaney scream. A sound of terror that he was sure he would remember for the rest of his life.
If he had a rest of his life, that is.
As he swerved to the right, it occurred to him that this could turn out to be a fatal accident. He knew what was out there.
A deep, six-foot-wide irrigation ditch.
Almost certainly overflowing with rainwater.
A second later, Ryan took out the almost certainly. Even though he tried to keep the car on the road, he wasn’t successful. They hit the narrow shoulder of soggy, slick gravel, skidded and then plunged right into the watery ditch.
Chapter Four
One second Delaney was breathing.
Then, she wasn’t.
The air bag hit her face and chest. The impact of the collision into the ditch, coupled with that slam, knocked the breath right out of her. Before she could react, she felt the icy cold water begin to gush into the car, spilling onto her feet and legs.
Reality quickly set in.
They were no longer on the road. The car was on its side, her side, harshly angled into a gaping ditch. The collision had crushed in her door, so much so that it vised against her right shoulder.
Trapping her.
If she didn’t do something fast, she was going to die.
She forced herself not to panic. No easy feat. Her heart was already pounding, and adrenaline was pumping through her.
Frantically, Delaney batted back the milky-white air bag so she’d have some room to maneuver and so she could see. Beside her, she felt Ryan do the same. She wasn’t successful. With each jab of her fist, each slam of her hands, the air bag shifted, but there was no place for it to go. And along with the crushed-in interior, it was literally holding her in place.
The water didn’t cooperate, either. It got deeper. Fast. It came in not as a trickle but a flood. Rushing into the car through the edges of the windows. The doors. And from the floor. Filling it. It rose past her knees. To her waist.
And it just kept on coming.
Along with it came the panic. The fear. She had to get out of there.
She felt Ryan’s hand bump against her left hip. Because Delaney was still battling the air bag, she didn’t immediately realize what he was doing. She quickly became aware that he was unlatching her seat belt.
“Come on,” he said.
It wasn’t a shout, but a calmly spoken statement as if this weren’t the life-and-death situation it had quickly become.
Ryan didn’t wait for her to comply. He caught on to her shoulder. Pulling. Tugging. Delaney did some maneuvering of her own. She rammed her forearm into the air bag, shoving it aside, and she slipped through the opening and into Ryan’s waiting arms.
It wasn’t an easy fit.
Even though his side of the car wasn’t bashed in, there was an air bag in the way, and he hauled her onto his seat, sandwiching her between the air bag, the steering wheel and his solid body.
He didn’t waste any time. With the exception of headlights that were buried beneath the water, it was pitch-dark and she couldn’t see much, but Delaney heard the soft grind of his window. It seemed to take an eternity to lower.
With each passing second, her heart beat faster. She prayed, while the water got deeper. Rushing into the car and rising until it swirled around her chest.
Then the soft grinding sound stopped.
The window stopped.
The headlights vanished.
Ryan cursed. Still not with much emotion. The stalled window and lack of light didn’t deter him. He slammed his shoulder against his door.
It didn’t budge.
Another slam. So hard that it shook the entire car and sent a wave of water careening right into her face. Delaney gasped. Nearly panicked. But then she thought of her son. Of Patrick. If she panicked, she’d die.
Because of him, she had to stay alive.
Somehow.
Delaney pulled in a long breath, holding it in her lungs. It wasn’t a moment too soon. The muddy water surged and rose. Racing in all around them, swirling and coiling, smothering, until it covered her throat. Her chin. And finally, her entire face.
God, she couldn’t breathe.
Even though there wasn’t nearly enough space for her to escape, she scrambled toward the narrow opening of the window, but Ryan held on to her. That didn’t do much to steady her heart or ease the overwhelming feeling of terror building inside her.
She lost the battle she’d been fighting with the panic. She had to have air. She had to breathe. She had to get out of there now.
Still, Ryan held on to her.
Why?
She forced herself to think, to calm down so she could conserve what little oxygen she had left in her lungs. It worked. After only a few seconds, it occurred to her what he might be doing. He was probably waiting for the car to be totally immersed so the pressure would be equal on both the inside and outside. Only then could they open the door and get out.
It was their one chance at surviving.
Ryan made another sway of movement. Not a battering motion as before. Delaney did some moving of her own, trying to find the door handle so she could try to open it.
He beat her to it.
Her fingers closed over his. His skin was so cold. Like death. But she pushed the eerie thought aside, and their joined hands pulled back the handle.
The door opened.
Relief rushed through her, but Delaney knew this didn’t mean they were out of danger. They still had to make their way out of the ditch.
Ryan hooked his arm around her waist and got them out of the car and into the shadowy water. She pushed her feet against the side of the vehicle and used it as leverage to propel them forward. So did Ryan.
Together, they surfaced.
Delaney gasped, pulling in the much-needed fresh air, and she reached for anything she could use to haul herself out of the ditch. She managed to latch on to a handful of mud and grass. Unfortunately, the soft squishy mixture wasn’t good grasping material. It slipped right through her fingers, and she would probably have sunk right back into the water if it hadn’t been for Ryan.
He stabbed his elbow into the muddy embankment, using it to anchor them, and in the same motion, he thrust them both forward. Away from the water and the car. And onto the gravel shoulder.
To safety.
Her lungs felt starved for air, and Delaney sucked in several feverish breaths. Beside her, she heard Ryan do the same. But other than that, he didn’t take any more time to recover from the ordeal.
Scrambling to get to his knees, Ryan tried to position himself in front of her. But he couldn’t. It took Delaney a moment to realize why. Their hands were locked together. Specifically, their fingers. She felt around and located the problem. The butterfly charm on her ring had somehow slipped beneath Ryan’s wedding band.
He pulled his hand away, still trying to reposition himself. Delaney did the same. A few tugs, and she felt something snap. The butterfly charm broke off, and Ryan and she were free.
Ryan immediately placed himself between her and the country road. Even through the rain and darkness, Delaney could see that he was searching for something. His eyes whipped first to one end of the road and then to the other.
Delaney did the same, but she saw nothing other than the night and the rain. Even the momentary illumination from a flash of lightning didn’t reveal anything. Definitely no sign of the other car that had careered toward them.
The car that had caused the accident.
Ryan cursed again, and this time, there was raw, uncut emotion.
Delaney wasn’t immune to emotion either as a sickening feeling coursed through her.
Perhaps this had not been an accident at all.
“I’LL BE RIGHT BACK with your statements,” Sheriff Dillon Knight informed Ryan. The lanky, denim-clad sheriff stood and headed for the exit of the interview room. “You and Ms. Nash can leave as soon as you’ve signed everything.”
Ryan glanced at Delaney, who was across the room on the phone talking to her babysitter. She nodded, an acknowledgment that she’d heard the sheriff.
Acknowledgement and relief.
Relief was certainly a reasonable reaction considering they’d been at the Grandville hospital and then the sheriff’s office for two-and-a-half hours. During that time, they’d been questioned, examined by one of the local doctors, bandaged, and then questioned again. What they hadn’t had was a moment of privacy or peace. Delaney probably wanted nothing more than to get out of there and go home to her son. Ryan overheard snippets of her conversation with her babysitter to confirm that.
Are you sure Patrick’s all right?
Please tell him I’ll be there soon.
Tell him I love him.
Kiss him good-night for me.
Definitely the words of a mother worried about her child, even if her child was probably too young to know what those reassurances meant.
They’d been lucky. Damn lucky. They’d gotten away with a bruise on Delaney’s right arm, a scrape on his neck and some assorted nicks. They would no doubt be stiff and sore for a few days, but all in all, the injuries were minor.
Lucky indeed.
Ryan took a long sip of the sludge-black coffee that the sheriff’s deputy had provided. The too-strong brew was bitter, obviously hours past its prime, if it’d ever had a prime. And yet Ryan welcomed the heat. Plus, it gave his hands something to latch on to so that he wouldn’t fidget. It was either that or stuffing his hands in his pockets. The coffee won out in the end. Too bad it couldn’t stop his mind from fidgeting, but that was asking a lot of mere hot coffee.
Even though he was in dry clothes—loaner jeans and a T-shirt courtesy of the hospital—the icy coldness of the water had seemed to seep all the way into his bones. It was a cold he’d never forget.
And he wasn’t about to forget the accident anytime soon, either.
As he’d already done a dozen times, Ryan went through the events that led up to them being plunged into the irrigation ditch. To paraphrase an old saying, the devil was in the details, and his gut feeling was that something sinister had happened tonight.
The road leading to the estate was private. Hardly used by anyone but his staff and him. Yet, the other car had been there. At the sharpest curve of the road near the deepest, widest part of the irrigation system. With no headlights on. And on the wrong side of the road. It’d come right at them.
Then disappeared.
Ryan didn’t think it was a phantom or a ghost car. Nor was it some illusion caused by the storm.
No.
The vehicle had been real. And now the question was to find out who’d been behind the wheel, why they had been on the road, and why the driver had done what he or she had done.
Ryan would get answers to those questions, and he wouldn’t rely only on the sheriff to help him. He’d call Quentin Kincade, his security guru, and get some investigators on this immediately.
“We won’t have to be here much longer,” he heard Delaney say. Ryan wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince herself or him. She hung up the phone, scrubbed her hands over her arms and started to pace.
Yep. She was a pacer.
Ryan had learned that about her over the past two-and-a-half hours. A pacer, a lip nibbler and a mumbler. He’d also discovered that she wasn’t a coffee drinker, had instead opted for bottled water. Perhaps because she was nursing and didn’t want the caffeine, or maybe because she was already too jittery.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Sure.” She’d answered too quickly for it to be anything but rote. It did stop her, however. She quit pacing, briefly met his eyes and shook her head. The motion sent a lock of her now-dry dark brown hair slipping down onto her forehead. She raked it away. “I just need to get out of here.”
Ryan understood completely. The fatigue was quickly becoming a factor, and he wasn’t sure he could think straight much longer. As a rule, he never liked to be in a situation where he didn’t have a clear head. “If the sheriff’s not back in a few minutes, I’ll see what I can do to speed things up.”
Another nod. “Thank you.” She paused a heartbeat. “For everything.”
“You’re welcome.”
Because it’d been a while, too long, since he’d said something that genuinely cordial to anyone, Ryan decided it was a good time to shut up and drink his godawful coffee. This forced proximity, and the remnants of the danger had created some kind of weird intimacy between Delaney and him.
Intimacy that neither of them wanted.
She folded her arms over her chest and resumed her pacing in her borrowed jeans and the faded blue T-shirt that swallowed her. It was at least three sizes too big, and yet it somehow managed to skim and accent every curve of her body. And she had some curves.
Something he was sorry he’d noticed.
Worse, he hadn’t noticed it just once. His attention kept going back to her—her body, her face, those eyes—and Ryan just kept forcing his attention on something else. Anything else.
Their respective coping behaviors, the pacing, the coffee drinking, the diverted attention worked for several moments. Until the silence settled a little too uncomfortably around them.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” Delaney said. “Not even a fender bender. For a couple of moments there, I thought we were going to die.”
He’d thought the same thing, but Ryan kept it to himself.
“Do you think this is connected to what Dr. Keyes told me?” she asked.
It was the billon-dollar question, and it was a possible connection they hadn’t withheld from the sheriff.
Well, in a way, they hadn’t.
Delaney had been careful not to accuse the doctor outright of a crime, but she had told Sheriff Knight about the unsettling call from the medical watchdog group. What she’d left out, however, was any mention of cloning. It was as if she were trying to strike that particular detail from her mind. Ryan was willing to bet she hadn’t been any more successful at it than he’d been.
However, the cloning allegation wasn’t the only factor to be considered here.
“I’ve made enemies,” Ryan admitted, staring down into his coffee. And that was a massive understatement. “This could have happened because of me.”
Not an easy admission to make to her, and Ryan hoped—no, he prayed—that this deed wasn’t on his head. He already had enough unresolved issues in his life without adding this latest episode involving Delaney Nash.
She came to a halt directly in front of the gray metal table where he was sitting and waited until their eyes met. “You didn’t mention anyone specific to the sheriff.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Because there’s a lot more than just one. But then, I don’t have to remind you of that.”
Delaney paused a moment and nodded. “No.”
She stood there, looking exhausted but determined to dig until they learned the truth. She also looked vulnerable. The vulnerable part wasn’t so obvious, but he knew it was just beneath the surface. The fact she was trying to hide it brought out some of his own feelings.
He wanted to protect her.
Which made him an idiot.
Delaney wasn’t some money-hungry opportunist out to extort from him. During the past couple of hours, he’d gotten past those particular allegations. But she was his enemy’s daughter. And she was embroiled in some kind of…whatever. He couldn’t dismiss the potential issues that had surfaced from the New Hope clinic and Dr. Keyes.
Nor would it be wise to overlook the obvious.
“I know we’ve been through this, but I need you to think hard. Is it possible that your father knew you were coming to see me tonight?” Ryan asked.
He braced himself for her to unleash a vehement protest, A declaration of her father’s innocence. After all, it was practically an accusation. A really serious one. Her father’s involvement would mean that he’d essentially tried to murder them.
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