Bridegroom Bodyguard
Lisa Childs
In Lisa Childs's Shotgun Weddings miniseries, a confirmed bachelor must walk down the aisle to protect his newborn son Someone is trying to kill bodyguard Parker Payne. But what's more shocking is the woman who shows up claiming he's the father of her child. The baby boy is Parker's spitting image, but how could he have forgotten a passionate encounter with this woman with caramel eyes?Sharon Wells has raised Parker's son since his birth. Now with a homicidal maniac coming after her and her son, it's Parker's unexpected proposal that may be the real danger. Sharon knows Parker just wants to protect them. But with passion flaring and a murderer intent on completing his personal mission, any distraction could mean the difference between life and death.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know who you are.”
She sighed. “I hoped you would—that you might …”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because it would’ve made this easier if you were expecting me,” she replied.
Expecting her? He hadn’t been expecting anything else—not the bombs or the shootings being meant for him. Why the hell would he have expected her?
“Make what easier?” he asked.
Was she a hit woman? A hired assassin?
He glanced around for his holster and weapon—but it, like his clothes, were nowhere in sight. Neither was any of his damn family.
He’d thought they weren’t going to leave him alone.
“What I have to tell you,” she said. Then she drew in a deep breath, as if to brace herself, and continued, “That this is your son.”
Bridegroom
Bodyguard
Lisa Childs
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Bestselling, award-winning author LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. She lives on thirty acres in Michigan with her two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com (http://www.lisachilds.com), or snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.
With much love and appreciation for my daughters Ashley & Chloe Theeuwes.
You are both exceptionally smart and strong and beautiful young women. You have made your mother very proud!
Contents
Cover (#u4186bf5a-1891-57d2-b72d-9baca633da2d)
Introduction (#u2843fdae-6ec9-59b4-9ade-b4e17bf7ae49)
Title Page (#u92ee0f04-d142-57ef-8f96-b2a0b32b48bd)
About the Author (#ub8f0e9f4-604c-5fd5-9028-e18acc9a5819)
Dedication (#u1d3c4bcd-032d-5d46-9ecb-55ccf5a1459c)
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 Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Extract
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u4176328c-4ce7-5e0d-8a4b-20d70d46b910)
Someone put out a hit on Parker Payne.
The statement echoed inside Parker’s head, but it wasn’t the only echo. His ears rang yet from the blast of the explosion that had sent him to the hospital and two Payne Protection Agency employees to the morgue.
Guilt and pain clutched his heart. He was supposed to have been inside that SUV, not Douglas and Terry. But, totally unaware of the bomb that had been wired to the ignition, they had jumped inside his vehicle for a lunch run. He’d been rushing out to catch them to change an order, but he had been too late. Doug turned the key, and the SUV exploded into bits of glass and scraps of metal. Two good men died, leaving behind wives and children.
It should have been Parker. Not only did he have no wife or child to leave behind, but he was actually the one whom somebody wanted dead.
He fought against the pain and confusion of the concussion that had his head pounding and his vision blurred. So he closed his eyes and tried to focus on the conversation swirling around his hospital bed.
His mother fussed. “We should take this conversation into the hall so that Parker can get some rest.” Her fingers skimmed across his forehead, like they had when he’d been a little boy with a fever or a scraped knee or when his father died. She had always been there for her kids even though she hadn’t had anyone to be there for her.
He caught her hand and gently squeezed her fingers in reassurance. She had to be scared at how close she had come to losing a child. In the past two weeks, there had been several attempts on his brother Cooper’s life and on his twin Logan’s life. But most of those attempts had really been meant to end his life.
Logan bossed. “We need to find out who the hell put out the hit.” Then his tone turned suspicious, so he must have been addressing one of his new in-laws, when he added, “Unless you already know. Your contacts must have told you who when they told you about the hit.”
The guy cursed Logan, so he must have been the hotheaded Garek instead of the milder-mannered Milek Kozminski. “If I knew who the hell it is, I would have told you—the monster put my sister in danger.”
Parker forced open his eyes, but he had to squint against the glare of the overhead lights and the sunlight streaming through the blinds. His head pounded harder, but it was more with guilt than pain. Stacy Kozminski-Payne had been through a lot recently, most of it because of him. He focused on his new sister-in-law. The tawny-haired woman stood between her husband and her brother, as if ready to stop a brawl. It was probably a position in which she would find herself for most of her marriage.
But then his twin did something Logan rarely did; he apologized. “Sorry, man. I know you would do anything to protect your sister.”
Garek nodded in acceptance of the apology and continued, “The only thing I know for certain is that it’s somebody who has a lot of money and influence.”
“You and Milek need to reach out to all your contacts and see what you can find out.” Logan resumed his bossing. As CEO of Payne Protection Agency and the oldest Payne sibling by ten minutes, he’d gotten good at giving out orders.
But the Kozminskis weren’t known for taking orders well, so Parker waited for them to bristle. Instead Milek asked, “Are you really hiring us?”
Payne Protection Agency was a security firm that Logan had founded when he’d left the police department a few years ago. He’d coerced Parker into leaving the force, too, and joining him. Logan had always been very selective about who he hired—that was why Terry and Douglas had been such good men and their deaths such a tragic loss.
Through narrowed blue eyes, Logan studied his new brothers-in-law. Very new since he and Stacy had married only hours ago in Parker’s hospital room so that he could be Logan’s best man. “I need your help,” he said. And Parker knew his twin so well that he knew that wasn’t an easy admission for him to make.
Stacy knew her husband well, too, because she hugged him in appreciation and sympathy. And love. It was obvious how much she loved him. And Logan loved her just as much.
So much that Parker felt a pang of envy. God, he must have hit his head harder than he’d realized.
His arms winding around his wife, Logan continued, “We need to keep Stacy and Parker safe.”
And finally Parker managed to fight back the pain and gather his strength. He struggled to swing his legs over the bed and sit up. “This isn’t your fight, Logan,” he said. “It’s mine. So you’re not giving out the orders this time.”
He had never minded before that Logan was his boss as well as his brother, but he minded now—because he didn’t want his boss or his brother getting killed. “I’m not hiring Payne Protection. I can take care of this myself.” Now that he knew he was the intended target...
Logan turned to him as if surprised to find him still in the room. “Parker—”
“This is all about me,” he said. “And you need to be all about your new bride. You and Stacy need to leave for your honeymoon.”
Logan’s arms tightened protectively around his bride, but he shook his head. “I’m not leaving while you’re in danger.”
“That’s exactly why you have to leave,” Parker pointed out. “Because when I’m in danger, so are you.” With the same black hair and blue eyes and chiseled features, they were so identical that most people couldn’t tell them apart unless they knew them. Logan was always serious, and Parker was usually a smart aleck.
Logan shook his head. “That’s exactly why we need to all work together to find out who put out the hit on you.”
“Probably a jealous husband,” a male voice remarked as another man stepped into the hospital room.
“Cooper!” their mother exclaimed over her youngest son.
Even though he was two years younger than Parker and Logan, he could have been their triplet. He looked that much like them. “Damn it,” Parker grumbled. “You should still be on your honeymoon.”
And that was when it struck him that both his brothers were husbands now. Only he and his baby sister were single yet. And his mom. But she was widowed, so that was different.
He didn’t want his new sisters-in-law to become widows, too. “You need to take Tanya and get on a plane and get the hell out of here. And take Logan and Stacy with you.”
“Logan and Stacy?” Cooper stared at the woman wrapped up in his oldest brother’s arms, and his dark brows arched in shock. Logan and Stacy had spent the past several years hating each other before finally but quickly realizing that they actually loved each other. And they hadn’t come to that realization until Cooper and Tanya had left for their honeymoon.
“Parker is getting upset,” his mother said. “And he needs his rest. Maybe having Logan and Stacy’s wedding in his room was too much for him—”
“Wedding!” Cooper interjected.
Their mother shushed him. “You all need to take the explanations and orders into the hall.” Her tone had grown sharper and her usually warm brown eyes were dark with concern and determination.
Her children and even the Kozminskis hurried to obey her, nearly bumping into each other in their haste to step out into the hall. She gently pushed Parker back against the pillows. “The doctor is keeping you overnight for observation,” she reminded him, which was probably good since the concussion had affected his short-term memory. “So you really need to rest.”
“Mom—”
“You’ll need all of your strength to fight with your brothers,” she said, dredging up the argument she had used when he’d been a kid reluctant to go to bed. She kissed his forehead before joining the rest of their dysfunctional family in the hall.
Finally Parker was alone. He was also exhausted. But when he closed his eyes, the explosion played out behind his lids. He saw the men through the windshield—just briefly—before the glass shattered and the metal shredded and their bodies...
With a groan of horror and pain, he jerked awake and discovered that he was no longer alone. A woman stood over his bed. She wasn’t a nurse—at least not one employed at the hospital—because she didn’t wear the green scrubs. She wore a suit with tan pants and a high-necked blouse beneath a loose tan jacket. So he might have thought she worked in hospital administration if not for the baby she balanced on one lean hip.
“You’re Parker Payne,” she said.
He tensed with suspicion. Why did she want to know? Then he pushed aside the suspicions. It wasn’t as if she was trying to collect on that hit—unless hired assassins brought their babies along with them, too.
And if they did, he would rather she try to hit him than Logan or Cooper. “Yes, I’m Parker Payne.”
She released a shuddery breath of relief. “You’re not dead.”
“Not yet.” But it wasn’t for want of people trying.
She shuddered. “I saw on the news what happened to you—or nearly happened to you. It was your vehicle...”
“I’m fine,” he said with a twinge of guilt at the unfairness of that. Doug and Terry should be fine, too, but they were gone, leaving family behind just like Parker had been left when his police-officer father died in the line of duty.
At least if someone was actually successful at carrying out the hit, he wouldn’t leave a child behind to mourn him like he had mourned. His family and friends thought he stayed single because he couldn’t commit, because he was a playboy. But he was practical. Given the dangerous nature of his job, he wasn’t a good risk for a husband or father. And he didn’t want to put anyone through the pain he, his mother and siblings had suffered.
The woman studied him through narrowed eyes. Even narrowed, her eerie light brown eyes were so huge that they nearly overwhelmed her thin face. If her hair was down, the caramel-colored locks might have softened her face, but it was pulled tautly back and bound in a tight knot on the top of her head. Her voice low and soft, she asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
He shook off his maudlin thoughts. He wasn’t going to leave anyone behind because he wasn’t going to die—at least not before he found out who was after him and made that person pay for all the pain he’d caused. Parker had rested long enough, so he swung his legs over the bed again and sat up. His vision blurred for a moment, but he blinked to clear it.
“Should I get someone?” she asked as she backed up toward the door. She jostled the baby on her hip, and the little thing giggled.
Parker focused on the baby. Dressed in tiny overalls and a blue-and-green-striped shirt, he was apparently a boy. With fuzzy black hair and bright blue eyes, he was also damn cute.
“You know who I am,” he realized. “But I don’t know who you are. Should I?” He usually never forgot a face—at least not a female one. But she wore no makeup and dressed so frumpy that she wasn’t exactly the kind of woman he usually noticed...unless he was in the mood for the repressed-librarian type. And maybe he was in the mood now because he was tempted to see what she would look like with her hair down...
“My name is Sharon Wells,” she told him, her soft voice questioning as if she wondered if he remembered it.
As if he should...
He moved his head to shake it, but even the slight movement sent pain radiating throughout his skull. He groaned.
“I should get someone,” she said again with a nervous glance toward the hall. “You need help.”
“No.” He already had too many people trying to help him, trying to fix a problem he must have somehow created himself. The hit was on him—no one else. Who had he pissed off enough to want him dead?
Cooper was wrong about the jealous husband. Parker had never messed around with a married woman and never would; there were lines even he refused to cross.
“I don’t need anyone,” he said.
Now she glanced down at the baby she bounced gently on her hip. His arms flailed, and his chubby little face flushed with happiness. Even though they looked nothing alike, it was as if the child was a part of her because they were so connected.
“Sharon Wells...” He repeated her name but it didn’t sound familiar even on his own lips. She wasn’t Doug’s or Terry’s wife; he knew their names, their faces, which he would never be able to look at again without a rush of guilt and shame. If Sharon Wells was a relative of one of them, she must’ve been a distant one, because he’d met most of their families, too.
He pushed up from the bed and stood on legs that were embarrassingly shaky until he locked his knees. He wasn’t staying overnight in the hospital, not when he had a killer to track down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know who you are.”
She sighed. “I hoped you would, that you might...”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because it would’ve made this easier if you were expecting me,” she replied.
Expecting her? He hadn’t been expecting anything else—not the bombs or the shootings to be meant for him. Why would he have expected her?
“Make what easier?” he asked.
Was she a hit woman? A hired assassin?
He glanced around for his holster and weapon, but they, like his clothes, were nowhere in sight. Neither was any of his family.
He’d thought they weren’t going to leave him alone...
“What I have to tell you,” she said. Then she drew in a deep breath, as if to brace herself, and continued, “That this is your son.”
He focused on the baby again. The little guy had fuzzy black hair and very bright blue eyes. The kid looked exactly like old baby pictures of him and Logan and Cooper. The baby certainly could have been a Payne. He could have been Parker’s...
Maybe he did need longer to recover from the concussion because standing was so much of a strain that his head grew light, and his knees gave out. His already banged-up body struck the floor. Hard. The last thing he heard, before oblivion claimed him, was her scream.
Chapter Two (#u4176328c-4ce7-5e0d-8a4b-20d70d46b910)
She shouldn’t have screamed, but his falling was such a shock that it slipped out. And started a commotion. Ethan screamed, too—his was high-pitched and bloodcurdling as he reacted to her fear. And people rushed into the room.
These were the people she had passed in the hall, the people posted like guards outside his room. But given the police reports she had seen about the explosion and the previous attempts on his brothers’ lives, she understood the need for security. Yet they had all let her just walk past them. They had asked her no questions; they had only stared...at Ethan, their eyes round with shock.
They had immediately known what it had taken Parker much longer to realize—that she carried his son.
“What did you do to him?” one of his brothers angrily asked her as he crouched next to Parker on the floor. He looked so much like him that he could have been a twin. There were two men that good-looking in the world? It wasn’t fair.
Then a third one rushed forward to help lift Parker back onto the bed. Were they actually triplets? This man’s black hair was shorter—in a military brush cut, but other than that he looked so much like the other two it was uncanny. And Ethan looked like a miniature version of all of them. He must have been the spitting image of what they had looked like as babies.
Parker shrugged off his brothers’ helping hands and stood up again, steadily, as if his strength had already returned. And given the way his heavily muscled arms stretched the sleeves of his hospital gown, he was strong.
“I’m all right,” he assured his concerned family. “I just tried to get up too fast.”
An older woman tore her concerned gaze from Parker to stare at the baby. “Or was it the shock?” Her hand trembled slightly as she reached out for one of Ethan’s flailing chubby fists. When she touched him, he calmed down, his howls trailing away to soft hiccups. “Of finding out you’re a daddy?”
Parker shook his head then flinched at the motion. “Mom,” he exclaimed with shock and exasperation. “I am not a daddy.” He glanced at one of his brothers. “Is he yours?”
Of the group of people who’d rushed back into the room, a tawny-haired woman laughed while a blond-haired man snorted derisively.
Parker’s brother’s eyes widened in horror, and he glanced from Ethan to her. “I’ve never seen her before.”
“Neither have I.”
Sharon flinched. They had met a few times, albeit a while ago. How did he not remember her at all?
“You took one heck of a hit on the head,” his brother reminded him. “The doctor said you might have some memory loss because of the concussion.”
“Short-term memory loss,” Parker clarified. “That means I might forget what happened minutes or hours ago, not months ago.”
Sharon should have realized that a man like him wouldn’t remember a woman like her. She had spent her life trying to be quiet and unobtrusive, so there was no wonder that so few people ever noticed her.
But then the older woman glanced up at Sharon, her brown eyes full of warmth and wonder. Her hair was auburn, with no traces of gray, so she didn’t look old enough to have three thirtysomething-old sons, let alone a grandson. “How old is he?”
“Nine months.”
Ethan turned back to her and reached up his free hand toward her hair. Because he loved to pull it, she always bound it tightly and high on the top of her head. But a tendril must have slipped out of the knot because he found something to yank, the fine hairs tugging on her nape. She flinched again over the jolt of pain.
Mrs. Payne chuckled. “The boys always pulled my hair, too,” she said. “May I hold him?” She held out her arms as she asked, and the baby boy leaned toward her, almost falling into her embrace.
Panic flashed through Sharon at how easily he had been taken from her. That was what would happen when these people learned the truth. She would be cut out of Ethan’s life as though she had never been a part of it.
“Mom.” Parker drew the older woman’s attention briefly from the baby she held with such awe. “Can you bring him out into the hall?” He turned toward the others. “And the rest of you leave with her. I need to talk to Ms. Wells alone.”
Sharon’s panic increased, making her pulse race. She lifted her arms to reach for Ethan, to take him back, but the woman was already walking out the door with the sweet baby. And Parker grabbed her outstretched arms, holding her back, as all the others left.
She hadn’t really been alone with him before. She’d had Ethan. Even though he was a baby, he had been protection from Parker’s wrath. He had to be furious. And he had every right to be. His son had been kept from him, and someone was trying to kill him.
But he wasn’t the only one someone was trying to kill.
* * *
HOURS BEFORE, the explosion had knocked Parker on his ass, literally. Sharon Wells’s announcement, that the baby was his son, had knocked him on his ass, as well, although he would have rather blamed it on the concussion. But he’d recovered quickly.
Sharon was the one trembling now, as he held her arms. A diaper bag hung heavily from one of her thin shoulders, bumping against her side. She stepped back and jerked free of his grasp; apparently she was stronger than she looked.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” she said. “This was a mistake....”
“Trying to pass that kid off as mine?” he asked. “That was a mistake.”
And why had she done it? What had she hoped to gain? If she had been hoping to force someone to marry her, Cooper or Logan would have been the better bet; they cared more about honor than he did. But, damn his short-term memory, they were already married.
“He is yours,” she insisted. She held his gaze, her strange light brown eyes direct and sincere. “You can get a paternity test to prove it. Since we’re at the hospital, maybe they can rush the results.”
He dropped his hands from her arms and stepped back. “You’re serious....”
“It’s just a cheek swab,” she said. “It won’t hurt him or else I wouldn’t have suggested it.”
Because she loved her son...
Their son?
He scrutinized her face. The women he usually dated wore makeup and dressed in clothes that flattered their figures. But with her enormous, unusual eyes and delicate features, she didn’t really need makeup. She was actually quite beautiful. And his pulse quickened as attraction kicked in, tempting him to see just what her figure was like beneath her baggy suit.
Because of those eyes and that face and his sudden attraction to her, he knew he’d never met her before—much less been with her.
“There is no way that I am the father of your baby,” he insisted. “I would not have forgotten you if we’d ever been intimate.”
He wasn’t the careless playboy everyone thought he was. He didn’t have a slew of conquests whose faces he couldn’t remember.
Her gaze dropped from his, and her face flushed. “But—but you have a concussion....”
He shook his head, and pain from making the motion overwhelmed him. But he kept his legs under him this time and remained conscious. And finally the confusion from the concussion receded, leaving him angry.
“There is no way that your child is mine.”
“Take the paternity test,” she urged him. “Ethan is your son.”
Like everyone else, she must have believed that he was such a playboy that he wouldn’t remember every woman he’d ever slept with, but his reputation was grossly exaggerated and mostly undeserved. Even with the women with whom he was involved, he always used protection. He couldn’t have gotten anyone pregnant. So she had to be playing some angle with him, running some scheme.
Why? That paternity test she was urging him to get would only prove him right. So was she just buying some time? Was she just trying to distract him? What did she hope to gain? Did she want to collect the payout for his murder? From what Garek Kozminski had said, it sounded like a substantial amount.
Maybe he needed to search that diaper bag and make certain that she didn’t have a weapon concealed. Or maybe a bomb. He reached for the strap of the bag, but his hand grazed her breast instead.
Her already enormous eyes widened with shock.
She wasn’t the only one surprised. Her baggy suit hid some curves. Parker was as intrigued as he was suspicious of her.
“What—what are you doing?” she asked, her voice all breathy and anxious.
“You’re trying to convince me that I made a baby with you and the concussion made me forget.” No wonder she had taken the opportunity to show up now after hearing the news reports about his condition. “The effects of this concussion aren’t going to last,” he continued.
She nodded, either in agreement or because she was humoring him.
How far would she go to humor him? And to further whatever her agenda really was? He wanted to find out. “My memory can be jogged,” he told her.
“I—I still don’t understand,” she stammered.
“Jog my memory,” he challenged her, as he cupped her shoulders and pulled her closer.
Her eyes widened even more as she stared up at him. “Me? You want me to jog your memory?” she asked. “How?”
“Kiss me.” But he didn’t wait for her to take his bait; he reeled her in first. He tipped up her chin and lowered his mouth to hers.
Instead of jogging his memory, the kiss proved to him that he had never kissed her before—because it was all new. The silkiness of her lips, the warmth and sweetness of her breath as she gasped. He took advantage of that gasp to deepen the kiss, to slide his tongue inside her mouth.
His pulse raced and his head grew light again, but he didn’t blame the concussion for that reaction. He blamed her. Because now she was kissing him back, her tongue sliding over his, her lips pressing against his. If her goal was just to distract him, she was doing a damn good job.
He skimmed his hands up her face to that frustrating knot on top of her head. And he tugged her hair free so that it tumbled down around her shoulders. When he had first seen her, he must have still been half-blind from the concussion. Because there was no other explanation for how he hadn’t realized how beautiful she was....
She was every bit as beautiful—maybe even more beautiful—than any other woman he had ever dated. But he’d never dated her before.
It wasn’t just the first kiss with her—it felt bigger than that. More monumental. It was as if the earth was shaking beneath his feet.
Or at least the building. The structure rumbled, and the windows rattled. There were no earthquakes in Michigan—so it had to be another explosion.
Someone had set a bomb inside the hospital? Someone was so desperate to kill him that they were willing to risk the lives of more innocent people?
Of this woman? And her baby?
Smoke alarms blared, but the warning was too late. The bomb had already gone off. How many people had been hurt? And would more people be harmed trying to escape the hospital?
The commotion in the hall was so loud that it affected his throbbing head. Voices rose in fear and confusion. Footsteps pounded as if people stampeded in their panic. He glanced toward the window that had rattled. Flames reflected back from the glass. Was it too late to escape?
Or were they already trapped?
Chapter Three (#u4176328c-4ce7-5e0d-8a4b-20d70d46b910)
The flames rose from the burning scraps of metal...of what used to be Sharon’s car. She remembered where she’d parked it—between the Mini Cooper that had rolled over from the force of the blast and the SUV that was already blackened from the heat of the explosion.
She gasped as she peered out the window around Parker’s broad shoulder. Her heart pounded erratically. Well, even more erratically than it had when he’d kissed her. She couldn’t think about that kiss right now.
She could think only about what could have happened to Ethan and her if they had been in that car. She pressed her hand over her mouth to hold back a scream of terror. The little boy was so smart and so sweet and affectionate. His life had barely begun; it could not be lost now.
She had already determined that she would do whatever was necessary to keep him safe. But bringing him here had been a mistake. She turned away from the window and headed toward the hall.
But Parker caught her arm, stopping her. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I need to find Ethan,” she said.
She needed to hold him, to make certain that the baby boy was all right. Loud noises terrified him; so did too many people, especially strangers. It was a miracle that he’d gone so willingly into Mrs. Payne’s arms, but that had been before the explosion and the chaos.
“I need to be with—”
“Here he is,” Mrs. Payne said as she walked back into the room with her grandson.
Just as Sharon had feared, he was crying. Tears streamed down his chubby cheeks. His screams must have escalated to hysteria because all he was doing now was gasping for shaky breaths.
She reached for him, and he nearly leaped into her arms, snuggling into her neck. His hands clutched her hair, pulling it around him. And she didn’t even care. Her eyes stung with tears at the thought of losing him. She loved this little boy so much; she couldn’t love him any more if he was actually hers.
* * *
“IT WAS HERS.” Logan confirmed what Parker had already suspected when he’d realized that the explosion had been a car in the parking lot blowing up.
At least it hadn’t been inside the hospital or close enough to the building to cause any structural damage. The windows had rattled and the floor had shaken, and the smoke from the parking lot had set off some of the alarms.
Logan added, “And the kid is yours.”
Stunned, Parker tensed and paused with his hand on his gun. That baby was his? But that made no sense. Unless...
Like a hostage at a bank holdup, Logan lifted his arms. “Don’t shoot me. I’m just the messenger.”
Parker slid his gun into the holster he had strapped under his arm. God, it felt good to be out of that hospital gown. And in a few minutes, he would be out of the hospital, too. After the explosion in the parking lot and all the media trying to get past security, he doubted that the doctor would protest his leaving early.
“The tests came back already?” he asked as he tried to slow the rapid beat of his heart.
It had been just as she’d said—just a simple cheek swab. From the baby. And him. And Logan and Cooper.
“Mom sweet-talked someone in the lab into rushing the results,” Logan replied.
Only a couple of hours had passed since the car exploded. The paternity test had been taken before the police arrived to talk to them. An officer had taken Sharon into a separate room, no doubt to question why and when someone would have put a bomb on her car. The police would have run the registration or vehicle number, if nothing had been left of the plate, to find out who owned it.
Parker had wanted to hear Sharon’s answers, too. But those weren’t the only answers he wanted from Sharon Wells.
“So who is she?” Logan asked.
“I have no idea,” he replied honestly.
Logan gestured around the hospital room. “It’s just you and me, Park. Tell me the truth.”
“I have no idea,” he repeated.
“So she was just a one-night stand?”
His temper rising, Parker grabbed the front of his twin’s shirt. “She’s not a one-night stand.” Not his, and he doubted, from the innocent way she dressed, that she was anyone else’s. He just wished he knew what exactly she was. A con artist? A killer? A kidnapper?
He hoped like hell she was none of those things. But he couldn’t let the sweetness of her kiss alleviate his suspicions about her.
“But you don’t even know who she is,” Logan pointed out.
“I’m going to change that,” he said. When the police were done with her, he was going to take his turn interrogating her. Hopefully he hadn’t lost his touch from his years with the River City Police Department. Of course, he had spent more time undercover than interrogating suspects. That had been more Logan’s job, which he was proving with his inquisition of him.
“Since you’ve got a baby together, that would probably be a good thing,” Logan remarked. He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re a father....”
Neither could Parker. But he had no reason to doubt the test. The only one he doubted was Sharon Wells.
* * *
THIS HAD BEEN a mistake. Sharon had realized that even before Parker Payne had kissed her. She should not have come here. But she had been warned to trust no one else. So she hadn’t told the police anything—not that she’d had much to tell them. She really had no idea who was trying to kill her or why. But she hadn’t told the officers about the other attempts on her life.
And she had tried to pass this one off as her car being mistaken for someone else’s—maybe even Parker Payne’s. He was the one who someone was trying to kill—or so the news reports had claimed.
The gray-haired police officer opened the door of the vacant doctor’s office he had used to question her and held it for her. She had her hands full with the diaper bag and the sleeping baby. Ethan had exhausted himself from crying, but even in slumber, he clung to her, strands of her hair clutched in his chubby little fists.
How could she love this child so much? He had never been part of her plan. She had never wanted to marry or have children; she had intended to focus only on her career.
“You’re very lucky, miss,” the officer told her.
How? Along with her car, Sharon had lost her purse and her suitcases. She sighed. “I know it was just a vehicle...”
She could replace the money and other lost items; she would not have been able to replace Ethan. But even though he hadn’t been hurt in the explosion, she was still going to lose him.
To his father...
“The car wasn’t the only thing lost,” the officer informed her. “The bomb didn’t go off until someone started the engine.”
“But I had the keys,” she murmured. But when she patted the pocket on the front of the diaper bag, she realized they weren’t there. She must have left them dangling from the ignition.
“Security cameras picked up someone checking out cars in the lot, obviously looking for one to steal,” the officer said.
“Someone was trying to steal my car?” Because she had left the keys and the purse and the suitcases...
How had she been so careless? She’d had her hands full with Ethan. But she’d also been scared to bring Parker Payne a baby he hadn’t even known he had.
Shaking his head as if in pity of the dead carjacker, the officer said, “He picked the wrong car to steal.”
And he’d died because of it—because of her. She gasped as guilt and regret overwhelmed her. But then a strong hand gripped her shoulder, squeezing gently as if offering reassurance.
She glanced up at Parker Payne. He was dressed in a shirt nearly as blue as his brilliant eyes; it was tucked into a pair of faded jeans. She kind of missed the hospital gown.
“Did the security cameras pick up who planted the bomb?” Parker asked the officer.
The older man shook his head again with regret. “The bomber knew where the cameras were and avoided them. We’re going to have the techs go over the footage again to see if they can find anything usable.”
Parker nodded in approval.
She was surprised the officer had been so free with information about a police investigation. But then the older man clasped Parker’s shoulder.
“Glad you’re alive, Payne,” he said. “Losing your father was hard enough.”
A muscle twitched along Parker’s clenched jaw, and he nodded again.
“You tired of working for your brother yet?” he asked. “We’d love to have you back on the force.”
Parker arched a brow as if in skepticism of the older man’s claim.
“Well, maybe not now,” the officer amended, “but once you find out who’s trying to kill you...”
“That’ll be soon,” Parker promised.
“We’ll help,” the officer said. He turned to Sharon. “But until that person is caught, you might want to stay away from Mr. Payne, miss. For your own safety...”
She had already discovered she wasn’t safe anywhere, either.
“We’ll protect her, too,” Parker said. “It’s what Payne Protection does.”
His family ran a security firm; he acted as a bodyguard. But what happened when he was the one needing protection? Who protected him?
He stepped back to allow the officer to pass him, and she saw the others standing just down the hall. The brothers who looked so much like him and the other two men who looked like each other with their blond hair and light-colored eyes. All of the men watched him and her carefully, as if they didn’t even trust her not to try to kill him.
But then, they were smart to trust no one—especially not her. She needed to tell him the truth. But when she turned back to him and found him staring in wonder at the sleeping baby she held, she realized that he already knew.
“He is your son,” she said.
“I know.” But he shook his head as if he was still in denial of being a dad. Or maybe that wasn’t what he was denying....
He was denying her.
Pain clutched her heart, and even though it killed her to admit it, she added, “I am not his mother.”
“I know.”
Of course he knew. Despite the concussion, he would have remembered her had they ever been involved. But they would have never been involved. Even when they’d previously met, they hadn’t been formally introduced; they had only glanced at each other in passing. Apparently he hadn’t noticed her, but she had noticed him. It was impossible to not notice a man as devastatingly handsome and charming as Parker Payne.
But he wasn’t her type any more than she was his. She would never have gone for a man with his reputation or with his good looks. The only men she had ever dated, and there had been only a few, had been as serious about their education and their careers as she had been.
Before her little man had come along. Before Ethan...
So what was she supposed to do now? Hand Parker Payne his son and walk away? That was what she had been instructed to do, but her car was gone now. Her purse and money, too. She had no means with which to walk away...even if she could bring herself to turn her little man over to strangers.
“You’re coming with me,” he told her, as if he had read her mind or, more likely, seen her indecision. “And you’re going to tell me what the hell is going on....”
If only she knew...
But just as she hadn’t immediately admitted that she wasn’t Ethan’s mother, she stalled on admitting her ignorance, too. She needed more time with the little boy—enough time to make sure he would be safe...without her.
Parker’s hand moved to her elbow now, as he guided her toward his family and friends. “We need a diversion,” he told them, “a way to get out of here and make sure that no one follows us.”
One of his brothers nodded. “We’ll distract whoever might be watching. Do you have a safe place to take them?”
Parker nodded.
But Sharon felt no relief. Parker might be able to keep them safe from whoever was after them. But who would keep her safe from him?
One of the light-haired men spoke. “I found out more information from my contacts.”
Parker lifted a brow in question. “You know who ordered the hit on me?”
He shook his head. “No, but I know that you’re not the only one. A hit was put out on someone else the same day as it was put out on you.”
His eyes darkening with concern, Parker glanced toward his brother.
And the man shook his head again. “It’s on a woman.” His gray-eyed gaze focused on her. “A woman named Sharon Wells.”
So she hadn’t just been in the wrong places at the wrong times. It had not been coincidence or mistaken identity. Someone was definitely trying to kill her. Someone wanted both her and Parker Payne dead.
Chapter Four (#u4176328c-4ce7-5e0d-8a4b-20d70d46b910)
Parker closed and locked the door behind Sharon Wells and the baby she carried—his baby. Then he slid his gun back into the holster beneath his shoulder. Before he’d brought her up from the garage in the basement, he had cleared the penthouse condo on Lake Michigan that his brother Logan used as a safe house. Parker had also made certain they weren’t followed from the hospital.
“We’ll be safe here,” he assured her.
She trembled—maybe with cold or maybe with exhaustion from carrying the sleeping child. When he’d cleared the penthouse, he had also brought up the portable crib his mother had somehow conjured up at the hospital. He had set it up in a corner of the master bedroom. He reached out for the baby and carefully lifted him from her arms. But the child—even in his sleep—clutched her hair in his hands, binding the baby to her as if those tresses were caramel-colored ropes.
She was not his mother; she had finally admitted that. But there was definitely a bond between her and the baby. She gently pried open the little fingers so that her hair slipped free. And Parker held only the baby.
Ethan—she called him. His son’s name was Ethan. He stared down in wonder at the little boy. His pudgy cheeks were flushed and drool trailed from the corner of his open mouth. His fuzzy black hair was damp, too. He had been held so tightly in Sharon’s arms that the child had gotten too warm. She had held him as if she would never let him go. And now she visibly held her breath as she watched him handle the baby, as if afraid that Parker might drop him.
That he might hurt him...
A test had proved that somehow this child was his. Parker had vowed to never become a father, but now that he was, he would do anything for his son. He would die for him before he would ever let any harm come to him.
If Ethan had been in that car when it exploded...
Parker shuddered in horror over the thought. He could have lost his child before he had ever realized that the little boy was his. He never wanted to let him go now, but the little boy was already overly warm. And Parker was hot himself—with anger over Sharon Wells’s deception. But she watched him as if he was the one who couldn’t be trusted.
Very gently, so that he didn’t awaken the boy, he laid him down in the crib. The child sighed softly as he relaxed against the thin mattress, his slumber deepening.
“We’re safe here,” he repeated. But he was reassuring himself now that nothing would happen to his little boy.
“You probably want to kill me yourself,” she said, “for misleading you.”
He snorted. “Misleading me?” He wrapped his fingers around her arm and tugged her farther from the crib so that he wouldn’t wake the baby as the anger he had barely been able to contain boiled over in his voice. “That’s all you think you’ve done?”
“I didn’t lie to you,” she insisted, those huge light brown eyes wide with innocence and sincerity. “I never told you that I was Ethan’s mother—just that you are his father.”
He dropped his hand from her arm as he realized she hadn’t lied. She had never claimed to be the baby’s mother; he had only assumed that she was because she had brought the baby to him. Why hadn’t the boy’s mother? That woman—whoever she was—had kept her pregnancy from him.
“Why were you the one to bring me my son?” he wondered aloud.
While the baby’s mother hadn’t even told him that he was a father, this woman had brought him his baby. She had shared a secret that wasn’t even hers.
“I shouldn’t be mad at you,” he said as he turned back to the crib and studied the sleeping baby. “I should probably be thanking you instead.” If not for Sharon Wells, he might never have known he had a son.
“So you don’t want to kill me?” she asked, but she narrowed those eyes with suspicion as if she still couldn’t trust him. But given that someone was trying to kill them, she shouldn’t trust him or anyone else.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He was treating her as his family treated each other, making jokes to defuse a tense situation. “I could use the money for carrying out the hit. Maybe set up a college fund for Ethan...”
She smiled nervously, probably not completely certain he was kidding.
He wasn’t entirely kidding. He would have to set up a college fund; he would have to provide for his son’s present and his future. But he wouldn’t be able to do any of that if he was dead.
And why was there a hit out on Sharon, as well? She wasn’t the baby’s mother, so who exactly was she?
“Maybe you haven’t lied to me,” he said, “but you haven’t been completely honest with me, either. You know a lot more than I do. You know who Ethan’s mother is.”
Color flushed her face, giving away her guilt.
“And I think you even know why someone’s trying to kill us,” he continued, “maybe even who...”
She shook her head and all that thick hair tumbled around her shoulders. He was so glad that he had pulled it free from that knot. Those caramel-colored waves softened the sharp angles of her thin face, making her beautiful. “I don’t know why,” she said, “or who...”
He stared into her eyes, trying to gauge if she was being honest. If only he were the interrogator that his brother, the former detective, was...
But he had been the undercover cop—the one more adept at keeping secrets than at flushing them out. He hadn’t needed confessions; he had caught ’em in the act—in the commission of the crime.
Had Sharon Wells committed any crime?
“Who are you?” he asked.
It wasn’t the question he should be asking. He should be asking who Ethan’s mother was. But Sharon was the one with the bounty on her head—not whoever the baby’s mother was. And for some reason Parker was more interested in Sharon than in whoever had kept his son from him.
“Who are you?” Parker asked again.
* * *
SHARON HAD EXPECTED his anger. She hadn’t expected his suspicion. “I told you who I am. I would show you my driver’s license to prove it, but it burned up when my car exploded.”
But more than material possessions had blown up. Somebody had lost his life because of her, because someone else wanted her dead. And that man might not have been the only one who’d been hurt in the cross fire....
Parker crossed the enormous master suite to a desk near the window that overlooked Lake Michigan. The sun was setting now, streaking across the surface of the water. He lifted a piece of paper from a fax machine. “Here’s a copy of your license.”
Her face—looking pale and tense—stared back at her from the paper he held up. Then he replaced that with another photo—one of a burned-out and boarded-up apartment building. “And here’s a picture of the address on your driver’s license....”
Sharon stepped closer to him. “Did anyone die in the fire?” She reached for the picture, which was actually part of a newspaper article.
He caught her wrist. “You knew about this?” A muscle twitched in his cheek and his blue eyes were so intense, so filled with concern. “Were you and Ethan there when the building caught fire?”
His concern was for his son. But she was concerned for the baby, too. She had been entrusted with his safety, with his welfare. It wasn’t a job for which she had asked, but it was one she had taken more seriously than her real job. And she had nearly failed. She glanced at that picture of destruction and shuddered.
“No,” she replied. “We weren’t there. But I saw it on the news.”
Panic clutched her heart as she remembered that horrific moment when she had realized that it was her home on the news, her apartment complex burning, flames reflecting off the shattered glass on the blackened lawn.
“I know there were injuries,” she said, “but I haven’t seen any follow-up reports to see if everyone recovered.”
That muscle twitched in his cheek again and he replied slowly, with reluctance, “Someone was killed....”
She sucked in a breath. “That’s two people,” she murmured. “Two people killed because of me....”
“Today two people were killed because of me.” He slid his hand from her wrist up her arm and squeezed her shoulder, offering comfort and sharing her guilt. “Two friends—two family men—lost their lives because someone wanted me dead.”
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. Long ago she had learned that crying was a waste of time. And she had never had anyone offer her a shoulder to cry on or arms to hold her. She had been left alone with swollen eyes and a red face.
“Why does someone want you dead?” he asked and then repeated his question again. “Who are you?”
“You have a copy of my license. You know who I am.”
He shook his head. “I know your name and your old address. But that doesn’t tell me why someone would want you dead. Are you involved with the wrong people?”
She hadn’t thought so...until now.
“Do you have a crazy boyfriend?” he asked, firing questions at her like bullets. “A dangerous career? Do you lead a life of crime?”
She laughed at the wild image he painted of her. It could not have been further from the truth. He had to have been kidding again like he had when he’d acted as if he would consider killing her for the money.
From the little time she had spent around his family, she had noticed that they teased each other as a way of communicating. But what did she know about family? She had never really had one.
“You think this is funny?” he asked, his voice gruff with disapproval.
“Of course I don’t,” she said. With all the guilt and fear she felt, she was barely holding it together. If she let herself think about those people...
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. If she gave in to them, she wouldn’t be able to stop. “I think this is surreal. None of this is my life. None of this has anything to do with me. I am only the messenger delivering your son.”
He laughed bitterly. “You make yourself sound like FedEx, like you’re just delivering a package.”
That was what she had been told—how the baby had been referred to—as a package. She cringed now as she remembered Ethan’s mother’s careless words.
“And that’s bull,” he said, “because you have an undeniable bond with...” His throat moved as if emotion choked him. He visibly swallowed and continued. “...my son.”
He had already claimed his child. Where did that leave Sharon? If she admitted everything to him, it would leave her alone again as she already had been for so much of her life. But she shrugged off the self-pity and focused on what was important: Ethan would have a parent who would love and protect him.
And if Parker were to protect his son, he had to find out who was trying to kill him and stop that person. So she had to tell him everything she knew—the little that it was.
“I have been taking care of him,” she said, “pretty much since he’s been born.”
“You’re a foster mother?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“A nanny?”
She sighed. That wasn’t the job she had started out with, but it was the one she had wound up doing. “I’m a law student.”
“So you work as a nanny on the side?”
“I work as a law clerk for a judge.” And she watched realization dawn on his handsome face. He knew who the mother of his son was.
He cursed. But then he tensed and glanced toward his son, as if regretful of swearing in front of the child. Ethan slept on, though. “Judge Foster?”
He had slept with the woman but didn’t address her by her first name?
She nodded.
And he shook his head. “She told me that she couldn’t have kids....”
“She was actually having fertility treatments so that she could,” Sharon said, flinching as she remembered the judge’s mercurial mood changes. She had been so thrilled to get the position clerking for the infamous Judge Brenda Foster...until she’d actually had the job. But the job as clerk had turned into the nanny job when Brenda had been unable to keep any other nannies working for her.
He cursed again but under his breath. “I need to talk to her.”
“Good luck,” she murmured. “I haven’t been able to reach her for the past two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” he echoed in shock. “She hasn’t seen her child in two weeks?”
With all the hours the judge worked and socialized, two weeks wasn’t the longest she had gone without seeing her son. “She sent me and Ethan away with enough cash to stay in hotels for two weeks. She didn’t want me using credit cards to buy anything.”
“Because she didn’t want you to get tracked down,” Parker said, his blue eyes narrowing. “She must have known someone was after you.”
Sharon shook her head. “Nobody was after me.”
He clutched the paper in his hand so tightly that he crumpled it. “This newspaper article proves otherwise. And so does your car getting blown up in the hospital parking lot today.”
Sharon shuddered as she faced the reality that someone definitely wanted her dead. Why?
“What else did the judge tell you?” Parker asked.
Sharon sighed. “Just that if I hadn’t heard from her before those two weeks were over, I was to bring Ethan to you.” It wasn’t exactly what the judge had said, but he was already so angry with Brenda—and rightfully so—that Sharon didn’t want to make the situation worse.
But then, she wasn’t certain that it could get much worse...until she heard the creak of footsteps on the stairs. Parker heard them, too, because he reached for his gun. Obviously, he hadn’t been expecting anyone.
He had promised that they would be safe here. But Sharon was beginning to fear that they wouldn’t be safe anywhere—not with someone determined that they die.
The steps squeaked again. There was more than one person coming up the stairwell. While Parker was armed, he was outnumbered. And even if he had another gun, Sharon had never touched one, let alone knew how to use one. She could only watch helplessly as he moved toward the stairs—putting himself between her and Ethan and the threat to all their lives....
Chapter Five (#ulink_b801d795-0a6c-5915-9d9d-25f1c091577a)
Curses echoed inside Parker’s head. He had been so certain that he hadn’t been followed. He’d been so certain that he had done everything necessary to keep his son and Sharon Wells safe. He hadn’t even told his family where he was bringing them, just that he had a place.
As a head rose above the stairwell railing, the curses slipped through his lips. “Damn you, Logan! I could’ve shot you....” His twin had admonished him many times for sneaking up on him. Why hadn’t the lesson applied to himself?
“I wasn’t sure if you knew about this place,” Logan said. “But Mom was insistent that I find you.”
And her head rose above the stairwell railing as she pushed past her oldest and rushed over to the youngest Payne. The new grandmother uttered a wistful sigh as she stared down at the sleeping baby.
She had known about her grandchild for only a few hours, but it was obvious she already loved him. Something gripped Parker’s heart, squeezing it tightly, and he realized he loved the baby, too. Ethan was a part of him.
And a part of Brenda Foster. She had lied to him. She had tricked him. Those tactics had made her such an effective district attorney that she had been one of the youngest judges ever appointed to the bench. And her ruthlessness had made her both one of the most respected and most hated judges ever.
Parker had been flattered that such a successful woman had been attracted to him. But while he’d been her bodyguard, he had refused to act anything but professional with her. So she’d fired Payne Protection. He had been attracted to her combination of beauty and brains, and once he no longer worked for her, he had acted on that attraction.
And, unbeknownst to him, they had created a child. She hadn’t just lied to him once; she had continued that lie with every day she had kept his baby’s existence from him. What had compelled her to finally have Sharon Wells bring the baby to him?
What kind of trouble was she in? Because of her ruthlessness as a judge, she had made many enemies and had constantly received threats to her life. But why would those criminals threaten the life of the father of her child and her nanny?
“I’m actually glad you showed up,” Parker begrudgingly admitted to his overprotective twin.
“What?” Logan reached for his gun and glanced around the condo as if looking for intruders hiding in the shadows. “Were you followed?”
“No. I was careful.” If he hadn’t been, he and Sharon would already be dead. “But I need to leave for a while. I need to go see someone.”
And find out what kind of game she was playing....
This was about more than a criminal with a grudge or the hit would have been on Brenda. Not on her nanny and the father of her child.
“So I need you to protect Sharon and...my son....” He could say those words that he thought he would never say because he couldn’t not claim that beautiful little boy as his. Like his mother, he already loved the child. “I need you to protect them while I’m gone.”
“Where are you going?” Logan asked.
Sharon just stared at him because she obviously knew where. She knew that he would have to go to Brenda. He would have to see her and maybe have a few choice words with her.... He couldn’t believe how she had lied and tricked him and cheated him out of Ethan’s first months of life.
“I’m going to see Judge Foster,” he admitted. “She’s part of this whole mess.” He wasn’t going to share that she was also a part of Ethan. He wouldn’t share that news with his family until he talked to the judge herself.
“Judge Foster fired us over a year and a half ago,” Logan recalled. “What would she have to do with anything going on with you and Sharon?”
“I work for her,” Sharon said. But like him, she didn’t divulge any more information. Maybe she was following his lead; maybe she didn’t want his family to know that Ethan wasn’t her son.
Logan dragged his hand through his hair in frustration and warned him, “You can’t just go traipsing off alone when you’ve got a bounty on your head.”
“I’ll be fine,” Parker assured him. “Nobody’s touched me yet.” Not for lack of trying, though.
“He won’t be alone,” Sharon said. “I’m going with him.”
Parker shook his head. “Nobody’s touched me,” he repeated. “But a lot of other people got hurt or worse because they were too close to me.”
So there was no way he would let her go along, no way that he would put Sharon Wells in any more danger than she already was.
* * *
SHARON SHOULDN’T HAVE left the baby...because she worried that she might never see him again. But at least she knew that he had a family—a real family. They would protect him and take care of him—not out of obligation but love.
Mrs. Payne had clearly fallen for her grandson. He wasn’t an inconvenience for her. Or evidence of her son’s mistake.
That was all Sharon had been to her grandparents—proof of their perfect daughter’s fall from grace. The mistake that had ruined and eventually claimed her life. After Sharon’s young mother had died, they’d taken over responsibility for raising her. Not out of love but out of fear that their friends and colleagues would think less of them if they had given her up for adoption like they had once urged their daughter to do. Even if she hadn’t overheard their heated debate about whether or not to keep her, she would have figured out how they’d felt about her.
“You should have stayed with Ethan,” Parker said as if he’d read her mind. Or maybe he had seen the fear and doubt on her face.
But darkness had fallen. And he had shut off the car so not even the dash lights illuminated the interior. He had also parked down the street from the judge’s house but put some distance between the car and the lamps that burned outside the gates.
Then he admonished himself. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“You had to,” she reminded him, “or you wouldn’t have gotten past the security system.” He had tried calling the judge, but she hadn’t answered any of her phones, not the one at the house or her office or her cell. Brenda either wasn’t home or wasn’t in any condition to let them in. Panic pressed on Sharon’s lungs. What if something had happened to Ethan’s mother?
He had family that would take care of him. But Sharon had taken care of him for the judge; the Paynes wouldn’t need her help like Brenda had. She would no longer have any connection to the child she had come to love as if he was her own.
Parker groaned. “That damn security system...”
Payne Protection had installed the high-tech system that didn’t use codes but fingerprint recognition. Sharon was surprised that Parker’s print wasn’t able to deactivate it. But then, Brenda hadn’t wanted him to have access to her house because she hadn’t wanted him to know about his son.
She had wanted a child but no husband. No family. While Sharon respected the woman, she hadn’t understood her desire for a baby. All Sharon had ever wanted was a career—one as successful as Judge Foster’s. But then she’d met Ethan and had fallen for him.
“I still shouldn’t have brought you,” Parker said.
“You would have had to cut off my finger, then.” She shuddered at the repulsive thought.
Parker chuckled. “I think my brother’s new in-laws might be able to find a less gruesome way to bypass it. I doubt there’s a security system that a Kozminski can’t compromise.”
“But they would need time to do that, and I haven’t heard from the judge in two weeks,” Sharon reminded him.
“And that’s out of the ordinary for her?” he asked.
Not wanting to criticize the judge, she hesitated. “She’s always very busy. But usually she would just have me take Ethan back to my place if she wanted us out of the way. But this time she wanted us out of town for those two weeks,” she reminded him in case he still suffered short-term memory loss, “and she wanted me to use cash for everything—for the hotel and for food.”
“She didn’t want anyone to be able to track you down,” Parker said. “She was hiding you and Ethan. So she must have known you were in danger.”
Sharon shook her head. “I wasn’t in danger before those two weeks. I wasn’t the reason that she sent me and Ethan away.”
“But you work for her and she is always in danger,” Parker said. “You could have gotten caught in the cross fire.”
“I’m kind of invisible. People don’t usually notice me.” Ignoring the sting to her pride, she admitted, “You obviously didn’t notice me since you keep claiming to have never seen me before.”
“I claimed to not have slept with you,” he clarified, “which is true.”
Maybe it was true, but he made it sound impossible. Of course, it probably was. “And that you never saw me before, and that’s not true.”
“When didn’t I notice you?” he asked.
“When you were Brenda’s bodyguard,” she said. “I was working in her office then.” Even then she had done little law clerking and more coffee-and lunch-getting. “I saw you a few times.” Those times had admittedly been brief, but his ridiculously handsome image had lingered in her mind.
His eyes glinted in the darkness as he stared at her. “No, I would have remembered....”
“Maybe it’s the concussion,” she said. But she knew it was her being unremarkable. She had learned long ago to be unobtrusive and quiet, but she’d still felt like such an inconvenience and disappointment to her grandparents.
He touched his head. “Maybe the concussion is why I brought you with me when I should have left you with Logan for protection.”
“And you would get into the estate...how?” she wondered.
“The Kozminskis...”
“Won’t be able to deactivate the system that quickly,” she pointed out. “Do you really want to wait any longer to talk to her?”
Even in the darkness, she noticed the muscle twitch in his cheek. He had to be furious with Brenda for having tricked him into helping her conceive Ethan and then for keeping the little boy from him.
His voice was gruff when he replied. “No.”
Then he opened the driver’s door. He had done something to the dome light because it didn’t come on, leaving her in the darkness.
She fumbled for the handle on her side, but as she did, the door opened. He wrapped his fingers around her arm and helped her from the car.
“I’m taking you with me,” he said. “But you need to stay close to me.”
Her breath caught at his words. She had no problem sticking close to his side—for warmth and protection. His tall, muscular body blocked some of the cold wind that whipped at her loose hair and penetrated the thin material of her suit. And his gun, clutched tightly in his free hand, offered some security as fear chilled Sharon even more than the wind.
Sharon was tall but she had to quicken her pace to match Parker’s long strides down the street. As they stopped at the gate, she drew in a quick breath before reaching for the security panel. But Parker caught her hand, holding her back from touching it.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. Her skin tingled and warmed from the contact with his. He didn’t let her go, continuing to hold her hand.
Didn’t he want to go inside? Hadn’t that been the point of coming to Brenda’s estate?
Parker glanced around the area, his gaze scanning the street before he peered through the wrought-iron gate at the dark mansion on the other side.
“I wish I had Cujo,” he murmured.
“Cujo?” Just how badly had he been concussed that he was longing for a fictional dog?
“My sister-in-law’s former K9 German shepherd,” he explained. “He’s great at sniffing out bombs.”
“You think there could be one inside?” she asked, turning her attention to that large brick residence. “But nobody could have gotten past security.”
He studied the panel now, as if trying to determine if it had been tampered with. Still holding her hand, he lifted it toward the panel.
She pressed her index finger to the glass. A light flashed as the machine read her print. The lock clicked, then a motor revved and metal rattled as the gate drew open. Parker stepped inside but held Sharon back with a hand on her shoulder.
“You can’t leave me out here!” she said, her voice cracking with fear as she imagined being alone in the dark.
It brought back memories of another lonely night long ago. She had been in the dark that night, hidden away. She reached out and clutched his arm.
“Don’t leave me!” She had said the same thing that night but she had been too late. “You need me to open the house door, too.”
“I won’t leave you here,” he assured her. “But you have to be careful. We don’t know what we’re going to find inside.”
Her stomach muscles tightened with fear and dread. “You think she’s dead?”
“It would have been on the news,” he said, “if the judge had been killed or even if she’d gone missing.”
She shook her head. “She had taken a leave of absence from work.”
“Brenda Foster?” he asked, obviously incredulous.
He wasn’t the only one who had been surprised. Brenda had taken only a couple weeks off after having Ethan.
“I think she was writing her memoirs or some kind of book,” Sharon said. “She told me that I would have to do some proofreading for her when she was ready. But she hadn’t asked me to look at anything yet.”
“How long had she been off work?” he asked.
“Her leave started two weeks ago,” Sharon said, “so nobody at the courts would have been alarmed that they hadn’t heard from her.”
“Would anyone else?”
“Are you asking me about her boyfriends or lovers?” Irritation eased some of her fear. He had kissed her, but now he was questioning her about another woman’s social life. Of course, he had only kissed Sharon to prove the point that she couldn’t be the mother of his child and not because he had actually been attracted or interested in her enough to want to kiss her.
“I’m asking if anyone would have reported her missing if they hadn’t heard from her.”
Guilt clutched her at the realization that she had been so petty as to be jealous of another woman—a woman she had always respected. But Sharon was one of very few who’d actually been close to the judge. “I don’t know....”
She didn’t know who would report her missing, either. With the hours she worked, she had little time to socialize. Not that she had ever socialized much. She had been more focused on school and studying and work than on making friends.
“Probably me,” she said. As Ethan’s primary caregiver, she was closer to his mother than anyone else. “But she told me to go to you if I didn’t hear from her—and to trust no one else.”
“Not even the police?”
She shrugged and then shivered. “No one but you.”
Parker turned back toward the mansion. He cursed and reluctantly admitted, “I should have let Logan send backup with me.”
“But there’s no hit out on Brenda,” she reminded him. “There is no reason to think anyone’s trying to kill her.”
“There isn’t,” he agreed. “But I know that someone’s trying to kill us.”
“They don’t know that we would come here,” she said. “And you made sure we weren’t followed.”
“So I could leave you out here....”
“You need me to open the door,” she reminded him. So she got that far with him—to the massive double front doors. After she pressed her index finger to the security panel, they opened slowly and creepily as if a ghost played butler for them.
Parker stepped over the threshold first, his gun drawn. He’d turned on a flashlight that was attached to the barrel, which he swung in every direction he turned, as if ready to confront a threat. But the house was eerily quiet. He must have thought so, too, because he asked, “Doesn’t she have any live-in staff?”
“No.” She wanted Sharon on call 24/7 but she hadn’t wanted her to live with her. “She prefers her privacy, so she just has a cleaning service.”
But that had obviously been canceled because as they crossed the foyer, it was clear that no one had been in to straighten up. Brenda’s stilettos had been abandoned on the marble floor and her coat lay a little farther inside the house at the foot of the double stairwell leading to the second story. Parker lifted his foot to the first step, but Sharon grasped his arm.
“She won’t be up there.”
“But it’s late and all the lights are off.”
Brenda wouldn’t have been in bed yet, though, unless she had company, and in that case, there would have been lights on. “She would be working,” she said, and she started across the expansive living room toward the double doors that led to the den.
But Parker caught her arm, jerking her aside before she could reach for the door handles. He swung the beam of the flashlight around the doors.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Trip wires—anything that could trigger a bomb.”
She shuddered.
“It’s clear,” he said.
But she didn’t reach for the handle again, so he had to turn it. He pushed open the doors and swung the beam around the room. It glanced off books and papers. But they weren’t on the bookshelf or the desk. They were strewn across the floor.
“Someone’s ransacked the room,” he said.
She shook her head. “No. Her chambers often look like this.” Each of the books was open to a specific page. But as she stepped inside the room with Parker, she noted that these books were ripped apart.
“Someone was looking for something,” he said. “Can you tell if anything’s missing?”
“Her laptop.” It wasn’t on the desk or the floor in front of it.
“She must have taken it with her,” Parker said. “She must have taken off.”
Sharon stepped carefully over the books and papers to move around to the back of the big mahogany desk. If Brenda had taken the laptop, she would have put it in the case that she usually dropped behind her chair.
But she didn’t find the bag behind the desk. She found something else instead—something she wished she had never seen. As she gave in to the fear and hysteria overwhelming her, screams burned her throat.
Chapter Six (#ulink_34045039-2c58-57c9-86dc-4bdecb94959f)
Parker had known he shouldn’t have brought Sharon along with him. But since there wasn’t a hit out on Brenda, he hadn’t thought they would be in danger in her mansion—as long as he made certain that they weren’t followed. Now he knew why there was no hit on the judge.
She was already dead. On the floor behind her desk, her body sprawled across the toppled-over leather chair. Her neck was bent at an odd angle—not because of how she was lying but because her neck had been broken. Blood, trailing from her mouth, had dried into a thick, black pool beneath her head. Her face was ghostly white. She must have been dead for a while. It could have been days, or weeks....
Sharon trembled and shivered in his arms. She was in shock.
But at least she had finally stopped screaming. Her voice had grown hoarse and cracked before she had finally calmed down, before she had finally stopped punching her fists into his chest and collapsed against him.
He shouldn’t have brought her here. He should have known it was a possibility that they might find the judge dead. But he was more surprised by what they hadn’t found. Her bodyguard. While Brenda might not have let any other staff stay overnight, she would have kept the bodyguard—especially since she must have been aware that she was in danger.
Why else had she sent the baby away with Sharon? She must have loved her son—their son. Maybe Brenda Foster hadn’t been as manipulative and selfish a woman as he had once thought she was. She had tricked and lied to him, but as long as she’d loved their son...
“I’m sorry,” Sharon murmured, as she clutched at his shirt, which was damp from her tears. “So sorry...”
Why was she apologizing?
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said. “And I am. I shouldn’t have brought you here. You shouldn’t have had to see your boss like this....”
She drew in a shuddery breath, fighting back more sobs. “But she was the mother of your son.” Her voice cracked and the tears began to fall again. “Ethan...”
His son no longer had a mother. And the boy’s father had been aware of him for only hours....
Now Parker was solely responsible for him? He had no idea how to take care of a baby, how to be a father. A twinge of panic struck his heart, but he ignored it. He would figure it out—with his family’s help. So he pushed aside that worry and focused on the woman trembling in his arms. He had to be strong for her.
But instead of clinging to him, she began to tense and ease away from him.
“Are you all right?” he asked Sharon. “I need to make some calls.”
She nodded and pulled completely away from him. Replacing his arms with hers, she wrapped them around herself—as if trying to hold herself together. “Of course. You have to call the police.”
She must have noticed his hesitation because she gasped and asked, “You are calling the police, right?”
He wasn’t sure that he should and reminded Sharon, “Brenda told you to trust nobody but me.”
Those already enormous eyes widened as if she was scared that she had trusted the wrong man. “B-but you can’t just leave her here like this....”
Brenda Foster was beyond help. It was Sharon and Ethan about whom he was concerned. But the crime scene needed to be processed for evidence. So he reached for his phone. But his first call wasn’t to the police.
He had called a woman—a beautiful, young woman with auburn hair and brown eyes. She showed up before the police arrived. But he didn’t let her look at the body; he didn’t even let her past the security-system control panel at the door to the den.
And goose bumps rose on Sharon’s skin beneath the thin material of her jacket. What if Brenda had been wrong about him? What if she shouldn’t have trusted Parker Payne?
“Are you all right?” the woman asked Sharon, her brown eyes warm with concern.
Sharon must have looked as pale and sick as she felt. Seeing Brenda like that... It had brought back so many horrific memories that she had lost it. And she was barely hanging on to her composure now. She could only nod.
The woman turned toward Parker. “Did you call an ambulance?”
Parker glanced up from where he was studying the body—that horribly broken and lifeless body—behind the desk. “She’s been beyond medical help for a while now.”
“I’m not talking about the judge....” She gestured toward Sharon.
“I’m—I’m okay,” she insisted. “I don’t need an ambulance.”
“She’s in shock.” The woman spoke again to Parker, as if Sharon wasn’t even in the room.
Who were they to each other? Obviously the brunette worked in the security business, too, since she hooked a laptop to the security panel at the door, so familiar with the high-tech system that she must have handled it all the time.
Parker moved from behind the desk to join the woman at the door. But she didn’t look at him; she was focused on the laptop instead. How could she ignore Parker Payne? How could any woman? He turned toward Sharon and studied her face. “Are you really all right?”
She nodded again. Physically, she was fine. Emotionally, she was a mess. But it wasn’t just over finding another dead body. It was over the suspicion that had begun to niggle at her.
Why had Parker called this woman to mess with the security system? To cover his tracks?
And Sharon had left Ethan with his family. If Parker couldn’t be trusted, could she trust any of the Paynes?
“I—I should get back to Ethan,” she said. “He’ll be afraid if he wakes up and I’m not there.”
“Ethan?” The young woman’s breath caught, and she stared at Sharon. “Is that...your baby’s name?”
Parker hadn’t told anyone that Sharon wasn’t the boy’s mother; he had told them only that he had to talk to the judge, for whom Sharon worked. He hadn’t told them the reason specifically, only that Judge Foster might have some involvement or information about why someone wanted him and Sharon dead.
Judge Foster couldn’t help them now. Not when she had already become a victim....
But whose victim?
“Ethan is my son,” Parker told the woman. “You could have met him at the hospital if you’d been there....”
If they meant anything to each other, why hadn’t she been at the hospital when he had been wounded in that explosion? He was obviously hurt that she hadn’t come to see him, so this woman was important to him.
If Sharon had been involved with him, she would have rushed to his side. Heck, she wasn’t involved with him, but she had rushed to the hospital as soon as she had seen the news of the explosion at Payne Protection. Of course, she had been trying to find him anyway because the two weeks had already ended with no word from Brenda.
Now she knew why....
“I was there,” the woman replied.
Parker’s brow furrowed. “You were? Then why didn’t you come see me?”
She shrugged, but her thin shoulders were tense. “What do you want to know from the security system?”
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