Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2021

by Anna J. Stewart

  If Travis Colton got in the way, he would have to be dealt with as well. All wars had unfortunate collateral damage. Only this war was a battle for greatness.

  CHAPTER 20

  Travis pulled his SUV into the garage and slipped inside the condo just after sunrise, making as little noise as he could. He was surprised he’d finally been able to convince the other members of Stanton’s team to let him out of his cage. Tatiana was safe, and he wasn’t the target, but if they’d known what he’d planned to do on his errand, they would have argued that it wasn’t an essential outing.

  He found Tatiana just where he’d left her, rolled up in the blankets in the center of his bed, with only her face and her tangled mass of hair popping out the top. At some point during the night, they’d relocated from the couch to his king-size bed, where the expanded space gave him a better opportunity to explore and cherish her.

  Under the first light streaming in the panes of his room’s circle-top windows, she dozed peacefully now, her brows smooth and relaxed instead of furrowed as they’d been so often lately. At least sleep had held her worries at bay for a little while.

  His smile spread as her lips, slightly parted and still swollen from his kisses, inspired memories of sweet tastes and shared delights that even now made his skin tingle. Impossibly, his body tightened again with need for her, his conclusion that he would never be sated disquieting.

  The other new discovery of the morning unsettled him more. Despite his promise to himself never to be that vulnerable again and his practical offer of a marriage without the complication of feelings, he was falling in love with her. If he were honest with himself, he’d lost that battle for his heart on that first night they were together.

  Did the fact that she’d made love with him again mean she was ready to accept his proposal? Would she believe him when he said he could now offer her the kind of relationship she’d said she wanted? He shook his head. He wasn’t ready to tell her yet. Besides, he didn’t know if she felt the same way, and he’d discovered that he wanted that, too.

  “Are you watching me sleep again?” she murmured, startling him. “That’s becoming a bad habit, you know.”

  “Busted. Sorry.” At least they weren’t going to have another awkward morning after, though technically he hadn’t stayed until daybreak the last time. Waking up with Tatiana in his arms was the reason he was beginning his day in such a good mood, despite the trouble swirling around them. Well, one of the reasons.

  “What time is it?” She yawned and stretched her arms out of her blanket nest.

  “Practically afternoon.”

  “Are you serious?” She tossed back the blankets, and then noticing her nakedness, clutched them to her chest again.

  He tried not to let her impulse bother him. Was she the one with regrets this time?

  “No, it’s still morning. But I’ve already been out to pick up a few things.”

  “The guards let you leave?”

  He met her gaze until she shrugged and looked away as reality set in. No one was coming after him. Just her.

  Tatiana sat up straighter in bed, carefully arranging the blankets under her arms. Did she even know how sexy she looked, with her hair mussed like that and her bare back still visible? He was tempted to climb back into bed with her and not emerge until after noon.

  “What did you have to buy?”

  “Just a couple of necessities. Before I get them, I was thinking about a good use for that front bedroom that gets all the morning light.”

  She yawned and stretched. “What’s that?”

  “Well, I was thinking...a nursery. Filled with a crib, a rocker, plenty of storybooks and too many toys.”

  At first, she stared at him, her eyes wide. But as he continued describing it, she couldn’t help grinning. He would require a nursery in his home even if they planned to only coparent their child, but he needed her to know he wanted more.

  “I can picture you in that rocker, our baby at your breast.”

  This time, she smiled. “You really have thought this through, haven’t you?”

  “I think of everything. Speaking of which. Be right back.”

  He hurried to the kitchen, where he’d left his packages, and returned with the vase in one hand and the box with paper plates and napkins on top in the other.

  “Those were your emergency supplies?”

  “Never said it was an emergency.”

  She grinned at the green tissue–covered flowers and the box that said “doughnuts.”

  “Oh my gosh. This is like Christmas. Bring those over here.”

  “Sure your morning sickness isn’t too bad?” he asked with a grin.

  “I feel okay so far. I’ll risk it.”

  She immediately opened the box and grabbed a jelly-filled doughnut, taking a big bite and then closing her eyes to savor it.

  “What can I say?” she said after she swallowed and opened her eyes. “I’m pregnant.”

  “I guess so.”

  He handed her the vase. “I hadn’t done anything yet to celebrate the baby.”

  She ripped away the tissue paper to reveal an arrangement of six pink roses with a light blue ribbon tied around the neck of the vase.

  “Sorry I couldn’t do more. My options were limited at seven o’clock in the morning.”

  “I love them. They’re beautiful.”

  “I didn’t know your favorite color, but I was making a statement with those.” He wasn’t sure why he was rambling, worried she wouldn’t like his gift.

  “Mom always loved yellow roses. Each week Dad would—”

  She froze, her eyes wide, as she must have recognized what she’d revealed. Ice filtered through his veins, his pulse thudding in his temple.

  “You knew all along that the flowers in the office and that card were really from your father, didn’t you?”

  Her mouth opened, as if she wanted to argue his point, but then she pressed her lips together and nodded.

  “He was sending you some kind of message. Snow angels?”

  “We used to make them right on the ice at Pike Lake.”

  She adjusted the blanket around her again as though the warm down covering could hide what she’d done.

  “You have to understand,” she said in a small voice.

  “Oh, I understand, all right. That you lied. To the police. And to me. Repeatedly.”

  “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Not when your father, the fugitive, told you exactly where he was going?”

  “I wasn’t positive that was what he was saying.” She stared at her lap as she spoke. “I mean, I thought I knew, but—”

  “Stop lying!” He planted his hands on his hips. “Do you even know how to tell the truth?”

  “I did tell Melissa the truth.”

  He refused to see the hurt in her eyes when she looked up again. He wouldn’t acknowledge her plea for understanding. She didn’t deserve it.

  “And I betrayed my own father by telling your sister where police might find him.” She shook her head, closing her eyes. “He’ll never forgive me for it.”

  Though her words chipped at the seams in his armor, he couldn’t let her slip past this time. “You waited days to tell. Precious hours when police could have been staking out the lake with the ice-fishing cabins. And then you still made them figure out which lake you were talking about when you know that in Michigan, you are never more than six miles from a body of water.”

  He paused, considering whether to add more, and then spewed the rest. “If not for all that, he might not have gotten away.”

  “Are you blaming me for a police swarm that failed?”

  “You did everything you could to ensure he wasn’t caught.”

  She shook her head, tears welling in her eyes. “That’s not true.”

 
“Really? You let me believe that those flowers were from the stalker instead and convinced me not to go to police when I knew we should.” He paused, his skin hot, his jaw clenched so tightly he couldn’t speak.

  “Even when you finally decided to share some of what you knew, you wouldn’t have told Melissa about the flowers if I hadn’t mentioned it.”

  “I told her enough. Too much.”

  “You played me for a fool. You let me defend you to my whole family, and to become a part of your lies, without ever trusting me with the whole truth.”

  “I did trust you, Travis. You know I did. But even you said I wasn’t obligated to help police build their case, and since I wasn’t sure—”

  He crossed his arms and glared at her. The words he’d spoken before seemed silly and naive now. “If that’s what helps you to sleep through the night, then go ahead and believe it. I never will.”

  The memory of her pulling that white card from her purse taunted him then, something that had bothered him at the time, though not enough. He didn’t want to hear the answer to his question, but he had to ask it, anyway.

  “If you never intended to tell police that the flowers really were from your father, then why were you carrying around that card in the first place?”

  She curled her shoulders forward as though she longed to fold into herself and disappear.

  “It was from my dad,” she said finally.

  Another day he might have accepted her words, might have pitied her for the impossible situation she’d been in, but he couldn’t do it now. Just like Aubrey, Tatiana had betrayed him. He’d swore he would never allow himself to be vulnerable to another woman, never give her the power to destroy him, and yet he’d done it again. Only the first had had been a pinprick when compared to this sledgehammer strike.

  “I don’t know who you are. Maybe I never did.”

  She shifted as if to climb from the bed and then pulled the blankets tighter, as she must have realized her clothes were still in the great room.

  “You do know me. Better than anyone does. And I know you.”

  “I thought both of those things were true for a minute.”

  He hurried from the room, returned with her clothes and turned his back so that she could dress. No way he would torture himself with seeing her again and risk longing for someone who was so toxic to him.

  Finally, he turned back, finding her fully dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching him.

  “I’m so sorry,” she began. “I never meant to—”

  “It doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done.”

  She folded her hands together in what looked like a plea. “It does matter. I would never want to hurt you. I love you.”

  He hated that his disloyal heart immediately raced over her confession. Apparently, he would never learn. “You’ll have to forgive me, but I find it hard to believe anything you say now.”

  “But it’s true. I do.”

  To that he didn’t know what to say. Of course, he couldn’t believe her, but he wanted to, which was worse. He trudged to his closet and returned with a duffel that he automatically started filling with shirts, socks and underwear.

  “Where are you going?” she wanted to know.

  “I can’t stay here.”

  “Please don’t leave. I need you.”

  They were words he’d wanted to hear, and now they sounded empty. Even the tears escaping the corners of her eyes had to be a ploy she would use against him. He wouldn’t fall for it this time.

  “Don’t worry. The guard detail will still be here to protect you.” From his closet, he collected shoes and a few pairs of khakis, and returned to tuck them in his bag. “I won’t let anything happen to my baby. Or the child’s mother.”

  He might have gone one step further to question the child’s paternity since Tatiana had a lousy honesty track record, but as stricken as she already appeared, he decided to wait. That could always be completed following the birth.

  “But this is your house,” she insisted, wringing her hands. “I can’t throw you out of your place.”

  “That’s what I get for inviting people I don’t know to stay with me, isn’t it?”

  “I can just go somewhere else where the stalker doesn’t know where I am.” She hurried for the door of his room.

  “What’s going to keep him from finding you this time?” he asked her before she made it into the hall.

  He refused to acknowledge her shiver, trying to convince himself it was forced.

  “Where will you go?” she asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  Travis hefted his bag on his shoulder and rushed past her, careful not to even brush her arm. In the entry, he collected his coat and boots. He couldn’t have answered her question, anyway. He had no idea where he would go next. The only thing he was certain of was that he couldn’t stay there with her. He couldn’t see her every day and be reminded that he couldn’t trust his instincts. Maybe she’d done him a favor by letting him know once and for all that his search for a connection was fruitless. Love was only meant for the lucky ones, and he was like a craps player holding two dice, each with six blank faces. The reality was becoming clear that he was meant to be alone.

  * * *

  Tatiana lifted her head off Travis’s pillow, damp from the tears she had no right to cry, and she rushed to the master bathroom to be sick again. The jelly doughnut that had seemed like such a wonderful gift earlier haunted her with its return visit.

  After washing her face in the sink, she took a good look at her ruddy reflection in the mirror. The face of a liar. She was more like her father than she’d realized. He would have been proud of how adept she’d become at subterfuge, capable of saying anything necessary to get what she wanted. She winced and splashed her face again, her skin refusing to cool.

  When she was relatively sure she was finished being sick, she dried her face on a hand towel and stared at her reflection once more. The woman looking back at her was a stranger. When had she lost her ability to differentiate between right and wrong? When had she disappeared in this battle of allegiances?

  She could say she’d had no choice but to cover for her father, but was it true? She’d always had a choice, and she’d picked a side. Travis had recognized it hadn’t been his. Now she would have to live with that decision.

  As Tatiana continued to watch the stranger, her gaze lowered to her abdomen, which she sheltered with her hands. She knew how difficult it was to betray a parent, but now that she knew she was going to be one, she should have been a better example.

  “Your mom’s really messed things up this time, Bean.” She should have treated Travis better as well.

  I love you. The words sounded strange and empty in her head, her heart aching with loss over something she’d never had. It wasn’t the way she would have chosen to tell him, either, but no matter what she’d said, he wouldn’t have believed her. Could she blame him? She’d lied about everything else. How was he supposed to know the difference?

  Nervous energy had her moving around in the condo, making up Travis’s bed, folding the throw blanket on the sofa and then heading back to his room to carry the gifts he’d given her into the kitchen.

  The home gave her the creeps now that Travis wasn’t there, an empty, yawning place, devoid of joy. In the silence, she couldn’t shake the sensation that she was being watched there. How was she supposed to bang around its vacant rooms without losing her mind?

  “I’m going to make this right with your dad. I promise.”

  How she would do that, though, she hadn’t a clue. What had made her hold back information about her father, anyway? Why had she felt compelled to protect him when she knew he was guilty? She’d thought of it as a loyalty test, but could it have been something more? What if it hadn’t been at all about who her dad was but who she was? Not abou
t her family of origin but the family she would create with Travis once the baby was born, whether or not they ever married.

  Tatiana pushed aside the internal, philosophical debate as she started downstairs to shower. Until the copycat killer was caught, she couldn’t worry about redeeming herself anyway. So, the image that flashed in her mind then in full color surprised her. Why was she recalling her mother’s grave site with such clarity when until now she’d always viewed it through a curtain of tears?

  That was it, she realized, stopping in the middle of the staircase and clinging to the rail to keep from plummeting to the bottom. Of course, that was where her father might have gone. Why hadn’t she thought about it before?

  She reached the lower-level bathroom and withdrew her phone from the pocket in her leggings. Before she even undressed, she dialed the number, but waited to hit Send. Just because she probably had no chance to heal her broken relationship with the man she loved didn’t mean she couldn’t help him mend some scratches in his own family bonds. She still had the chance to do the right thing, even if she was late coming out of the gate.

  She straightened her shoulders as she stood staring into another mirror and clicked the button to make the call. Now was the time for her to show not what Len Davison’s daughter, but what Tatiana Davison would do. It was long past time for her to be the person and the mother her child deserved.

  CHAPTER 21

  Tatiana directed Melissa to the kitchen table at Travis’s condo an hour later, the police chief eyeing her suspiciously as she passed.

  “You know, I think you have the wrong idea about my job description,” Melissa told her as she sat in the seat next to the box of doughnuts.

  “I know it’s highly irregular for you to make house calls, but I can’t exactly pop by the police station when I’m basically under house arrest here.” Tatiana poured herself a glass of milk and gestured to the jug to offer Travis’s sister one.