Out of Time

by Monica McCarty

  “You should watch her closely for the rest of the day, Mr. Wilson,” the doctor, a woman who couldn’t have been much older than twenty-five, instructed him. If Natalie was surprised that he’d adopted her false identification—or that he’d posed as her husband—she didn’t show it. It had seemed simpler when he was trying to get someone to help them. “Don’t let her sleep longer than an hour or two. You’ll want to assess her consciousness every time you wake her.”

  Scott nodded. “I’m familiar with the AVPU code.” The acronym stood for alertness, response to a voice, assessment of pain, and making sure they weren’t unresponsive to any of the tests. In the Teams they used something similar but more detailed called MACE when someone had their cage rattled.

  The doctor nodded, eyeing him a little closer and clearly trying to size him up. “Good. And don’t hesitate to bring her back in if the symptoms worsen or don’t improve in a day or two.”

  Natalie had been unusually quiet, but she finally broke her silence. “Is my baby okay?” She looked as if she was going to cry. “I fell.”

  Scott froze.

  The doctor smiled down at her kindly. “It wasn’t a body scan, but I saw from your chart that you are pregnant. Your husband mentioned the fall, but I didn’t see anything to concern me. You aren’t bleeding?”

  Natalie shook her head, not correcting her on the wrong assumption of their marital status.

  “I’m sure the baby is fine,” the doctor assured her. “They have a nice soft landing in there. But try to take it easy for the next few days, all right?”

  Natalie nodded.

  Scott was reeling. He sat, glad there was a chair behind him to catch him. Natalie hadn’t been lying. She was pregnant.

  “Are you all right?” the doctor asked him with a frown. “You look a little shell-shocked—like you were the one with the lump on your head.”

  Scott was having trouble finding words.

  Natalie filled in for him. “He didn’t know,” she said. “I was going to surprise him.” She turned to look at him. “Surprise, sweetheart. You’re going to be a father.”

  Eight

  Father? Scott still didn’t want to believe it. He stared at the door long after the doctor went out.

  She’s pregnant. Pregnant, damn it!

  But as soon as the shock began to fade, another thought stole through his head. A possibility that he didn’t want to believe but that he couldn’t ignore. “Even if you are pregnant, how do I know it’s mine? For all I know the baby could be the hockey player’s.”

  She flinched as if the accusation had physically struck her, which seemed odd. Her gaze pinned him as if to say, How could you ask that? But could she blame him? She’d lied to him from the first moment they’d met. Why should this be any different?

  “I told you before that I despised Mick.” The truth of her words was punctuated by the fierceness of her expression. She was angry, but there was something more. Something raw and intense. Something that came close to revulsion and was too reactive to be feigned. “It’s your baby, Scott. I haven’t been with any other man since I met you.”

  Her gaze didn’t falter from his. Either she was telling the truth or she was one of the most accomplished liars he’d ever met.

  The fact that he didn’t know which one pissed him off. Detecting bullshit was his job. For a SEAL commander, not being able to trust his judgment could be deadly.

  “How the hell did this happen?” he said with an angry drag of his fingers through the long hair that he wasn’t used to.

  He didn’t expect an answer, but she gave him one. “I think you know exactly how it happened. Or should I remind you?”

  She didn’t need to. He remembered. He remembered that night only too well. It was what had given him that niggle of doubt from the beginning. They’d had sex without a condom. Once. But once was all it took, as every mother everywhere told their teenagers.

  Scott was the one to look away first. He raked his fingers through his hair again and moved to the window, staring absently through the blinds into the parking lot.

  What a mess. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any more fucked up. He should have known better. Things could always get more fucked up. But he didn’t have a backup plan for this.

  Was it possible? Could the baby be his? And if it was, where the hell did that leave him? He had to take her in to clear his name and see justice done for his men, but what would happen to her and the baby after? She would probably be imprisoned. Could he do that to his unborn child?

  It wasn’t even a question. As she must know. She had played him perfectly.

  He turned back to face her, furious at her and at his own stupidity—he wasn’t a teenager, and he knew better than to have sex without protection. But that night . . . he’d needed her.

  “I want a blood test.”

  She held his gaze for a moment before letting her eyes drop as if she didn’t want him to see how his words had hurt her.

  Scott felt something akin to shame twisting in his chest. But he told himself he had every right to do this. He had no reason to trust her about this or anything else. And he knew firsthand how devastating it was to find out you had the wrong DNA running through your veins.

  “Of course,” she said with just enough disappointment to make him feel like a world-class asshole. “Whatever you want, Scott.”

  She looked so wronged and innocent lying there in the bed that it pissed him off. He wasn’t the bad guy in this. No matter how much she played the wounded dove. “Jesus Christ, Nat, can you blame me?”

  The errant slip of the nickname was proof of just how pushed to the edge he was by all this. She had him twisted up in knots. Confused and angry. He didn’t know what was a lie and what was the truth anymore. She’d betrayed him every way that mattered; what to think and how to feel should be crystal fucking clear.

  She held his gaze, maybe understanding his confusion. “No. I guess I can’t.”

  * * *

  • • •

  If the doctor was surprised by the request for a blood test, she was too professional to show it. She drew the blood from Natalie and collected the cheek swab from Scott for the NIPP test.

  NIPP apparently stood for non-invasive prenatal paternity test. Not surprisingly, as this was Natalie’s first time being pregnant or being accused of lying about the father, she hadn’t heard of it before. But thanks to advances in medical science and DNA testing, paternity could now be established without the risk of miscarriage that used to come from amniocentesis or CVS testing.

  Natalie knew she had no right to be hurt by Scott’s request for proof. She’d lied to him in so many ways, why should he believe her about this? But could he honestly think she could be sleeping with someone else when they were sharing that kind of passion and intimacy?

  What they’d had was special. She knew that, and part of her wanted him to know that, too. To believe in her—in them—just a little. To see the real her. Not some Russian Mata Hari but the woman forced to do something against her will. If he had truly cared about her, shouldn’t he believe her just a little? Shouldn’t he wonder why? Shouldn’t he have questions and not be so ready to rush to judgment?

  Maybe it was foolish and unrealistic. Rationally she knew it was too much to expect, but the tightness squeezing her chest told her that her heart just wasn’t getting it.

  And Scott had no idea how wrong he was about Mick.

  She knew why Scott suspected him. Mick had been gorgeous. The type of guy women flocked to. When she first met him, Mick had still been playing hockey, and she’d been over the moon, not to mention the envy of all her friends, when the tall, muscular, bronzed god had come up to her in the Georgetown restaurant where they were celebrating her coworker’s twenty-fourth birthday to ask her out.

  She’d refused at first. She didn’t go out with strange guys
—even ones as good-looking as Mick. He’d persisted, however, and told her she could check him out—that he played professional hockey and wasn’t a psycho.

  The first part had proved correct. She’d foolishly taken Google for a reference and accepted the date. But their “date” was all a pretense, as she would learn when he came to pick her up.

  He didn’t even bother to take her to dinner before telling her what he wanted. That job at the Pentagon that she interviewed for, but didn’t want? She was going to take it. And the freshman fifteen that she’d put on in college and hadn’t taken off almost seven years later? Lose them. He wanted her ready when and if she was called upon.

  Ready for what? she’d asked, totally discombobulated. To—get this—spy on the only country she’d ever known for Russia, the country that had imprisoned and killed her parents and left her and her sister in an orphanage. He had to be crazy. She’d actually laughed in his face.

  Which was a mistake she never made again. Mick had shown her exactly how serious he was by trying to take her power away. He’d held her down right there in her apartment and raped her.

  But it hadn’t broken her, maybe because of what she’d been through at the orphanage as a child. She knew bleakness and suffering, and she knew she would recover. She wouldn’t let his physical strength make her cower.

  Even after the rape, she’d refused to do what he asked until he’d made threats that she couldn’t ignore. It was the kind of leverage that governments used on “assets” all the time, albeit more deadly.

  It wasn’t ideology that had turned her into a spy; he’d threatened her family. First he’d started with her birth parents in Russia, insisting they were still alive and would suffer if she refused. Not believing him and knowing in her heart that they were dead as the orphanage had told her, she’d demanded proof. When he showed her a picture, she’d known he was lying. The dour woman in the photo was not her mother. Natalie might not be able to remember her face, but she’d known it on a bone-deep level.

  But it hadn’t taken him long to find a threat that could make her jump. “I hear your father is in bad health.” Her breath had frozen in her lungs. The thought of him targeting the loving parents who’d adopted the two scarred and scared children and brought them into their home . . . how could she let that happen?

  And then, just in case there was any doubt, he uttered the coup de grâce that would assure her agreement. “You have a younger sister, don’t you?” he’d asked, looking her up and down. There was no mistaking the gleam in his eyes. He would hurt her sister the way he had her. Just the thought of it had made her sick. She would do anything to protect her sister. Anything. Natalie had failed Lana once; she would never do so again.

  Natalie had accepted the job, lost weight, dyed her hair a lighter blond, wore the stupid colored contacts, and dressed in the sexy heels and suits he told her to. She learned to act cool and confident, even when she wanted to just curl into a ball and cry.

  It hadn’t been so bad at first. Natalie had kept her head down and did her job as quietly and efficiently as she could. Which turned out to be a mistake, when her efficiency—not, ironically, the sexy silk blouses—caught the eye of the deputy secretary of defense. Mick forced her to take the new job. Fortunately for her, however, the deputy secretary was happily married to a wife he adored. Natalie was thus spared the horrible “request” from Mick to sleep with her boss for information.

  That was the man Scott thought had fathered her child. An opportunistic, rapist thug who sold out the country that had offered him a home, not for idealistic or sentimental reasons but for money.

  But she’d learned that many years later. As she had learned why she’d been targeted.

  “It will take about a week.”

  The doctor’s words brought Natalie back to reality. Mick was dead. The only bad thing about that was that she had not been the one to pull the trigger.

  How many times had she dreamed of it? Only knowing that the men he worked for would retaliate had stayed her hand. But although killing Mick might not have ended her nightmare, it definitely would have been personally satisfying.

  “A week?” Scott repeated, clearly finding that unacceptable. His expression was what she imagined his men saw when he needed something done. The flexed jaw. The steely gaze. The confidence and unwavering authority that was hard to argue with. “I can’t wait that long.”

  The doctor was young but had already learned the skill of dealing with difficult patients—or, apparently, difficult authoritative SEAL commanders. She was equally firm and unyielding as she responded, “I’m afraid that’s our standard turnaround time.”

  Scott seemed to realize he’d overplayed his hand so he changed tactics to one Natalie had never seen him use before.

  “Can it be expedited? I don’t care what it costs. I’ll pay whatever it takes if you can have it sped up.”

  Natalie knew all about Scott’s blue-blood background, but he rarely flaunted or even discussed his wealth. She’d certainly never seen him use it to get what he wanted. His father had left him millions, but Scott told her he’d put it in a trust. She knew he felt guilty about inheriting money from a man who had been duped into claiming another man’s son.

  His wealth and perceived influence due to his family connections had been part of the reason Mick had forced her to target Scott—not to mention his role as a SEAL. She’d never forget her shock at walking into a meeting at the Pentagon and seeing the man she’d just had forty-eight hours of almost nonstop sex with in a hotel room seated at the table. Worse was discovering that her “sailor” was actually the OIC (officer in charge) of one of the platoons of the president’s personal secret SEAL team. Natalie still didn’t know how Mick had found out about him so quickly.

  But neither she nor Mick could have guessed how fruitless her efforts would be. Scott was closemouthed about his work and not interested in using family connections, and she was the worst spy ever who stupidly fell in love with her target.

  But recalling Scott’s background put another spin on his request for the paternity test, and Natalie felt the ache in her chest ease a little. It wasn’t just about not trusting her. Her pregnancy had unwittingly struck a still-raw wound. One that he tried to pretend didn’t matter to him.

  The doctor frowned. “I’m not sure. No one has ever requested that before.”

  Scott wasn’t used to acting like a rich asshole, and Natalie could see he was uncomfortable with how his request had come out. “I’d really appreciate it if you could check into it. There are extenuating circumstances that I’m not at liberty to discuss.”

  He smiled, and even though Natalie knew it wasn’t meant to be charming it definitely was. Scott was usually so serious and no-nonsense that the appearance of a smile had always made Natalie feel as if she was basking in a special glow—a side of him that was rarely revealed. It had been that way the first night they’d met in the bar and his guard was down. She wondered whether she would have fallen for him so quickly if their first meeting had been the mission briefing where he’d been 100 percent “don’t try to stand in my way” SEAL commander.

  Probably. She looked at him. Definitely. There was something supremely sexy about a man confident in his own skin. A man who knew he was one of the best and commanded authority wherever he went. Scott was the guy whom everyone would turn to when things went south—to use SEAL parlance—and he shouldered that burden with an ease that seemed effortless.

  And then there were his looks.

  Put it all together and she hadn’t had a chance. The dull ache in her chest told her that she still didn’t. She would love him until the day she died. Which, admittedly, might not be that long from now.

  Maybe the doctor wasn’t quite as skilled at hiding her reactions as Natalie thought—or having all that masculine perfection beaming on her was too much for any woman to resist. Natalie thought she detected a
slight blush in the doctor’s cheeks as she smiled back at him. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Scott thanked her and the doctor left.

  “Do you always get what you want?” Natalie asked.

  She’d meant it wryly, but his reply was deadly serious. “No. Sometimes I’m completely disappointed.”

  It was hard to misinterpret that. She turned away, unable to bear the condemnation in his eyes or the burning in her chest.

  Nine

  It was late afternoon by time they returned to the farmhouse from urgent care. Scott left Natalie in bed to rest and went downstairs to make the phone call to his sister that he’d been putting off. He wasn’t ready to talk about Natalie—or what the hell he was going to do with her—even to Kate. Not until he knew whether the baby was his. He was relieved when she didn’t answer. He left her a message not to worry, but he was going dark for a day or two.

  Glad for the respite, he turned off his phone and went into the kitchen to see what he could find to make for dinner. He wasn’t much of a cook, but he could boil water for pasta or throw potatoes in the oven to bake.

  He’d noticed an old grill outside, but as Natalie ate mostly rabbit food, he wasn’t holding out much hope for meat to put on it. The sandwich that he’d picked up at the market to have for lunch hadn’t been enough to put a dent in his hunger after the two missed meals that had come before.

  It was strange how when he was downrange on missions he could go for days subsisting on MREs or whatever other almost-inedible food the military thought to provide them, but as soon as he was stateside he was starving if he missed a meal.

  He caught sight of the plate of muffins and helped himself to one of the two that remained. They really were good, and as he wiped the remnants of the crumble topping from his mouth with a napkin, he still found it hard to believe that she baked. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if it was unusual, but the domesticity of it seemed so incongruous with the sophisticated, high-powered DC insider that he’d known.