Involuntary Daddy

by Rachel Lee

  “I thought I had some pretty good defenses, but yours beat all.”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Rachel Lee

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  “I thought I had some pretty good defenses, but yours beat all.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The difference between us is that I’m willing to admit what I want, and willing to hope I might find it. You aren’t even willing to hope,” Rafe said.

  “That’s not true!”

  “Sure it is. I drive you crazy, don’t I, with the way I get close and then pull back? And I don’t blame you for feeling that way. But you don’t get close, then pull away, you shut the doors and pull up the drawbridge.”

  “That’s not true,” Angela insisted again.

  “It sure as hell is. And it’s getting more and more obvious, so I must be getting too close. Just keep one thing in mind, Angela. I may pull away when I get scared, but I keep coming back.”

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to another month of fabulous reading from Silhouette Intimate Moments, the line that brings you excitement along with your romance every month. As I’m sure you’ve already noticed, the month begins with a return to CONARD COUNTY, in Involuntary Daddy, by bestselling author Rachel Lee As always, her hero and heroine will live in your heart long after you’ve turned the last page, along with an irresistible baby boy nicknamed Peanut. You’ll wish you could take him home yourself.

  Award winner Mane Ferrarella completes her CHILDFINDERS, INC trilogy with Hero in the Nick of Time, about a fake marriage that’s destined to become real, and not one, but two, safely recovered children Marilyn Pappano offers the second installment of her HEARTBREAK CANYON miniseries, The Horseman’s Bride. This Oklahoma native certainly has a way with a Western man! After too long away, Doreen Owens Malek returns with our MEN IN BLUE title, An Officer and a Gentle Woman, about a cop falling in love with his prime suspect. Kylie Brant brings us the third of THE SULLIVAN BROTHERS in Falling Hard and Fast, a steamy read that will have your heart racing. Finally, welcome RaeAnne Thayne, whose debut book for the line, The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom, is also a WAY OUT WEST title You’ll be happy to know that her second book is already scheduled.

  Enjoy them all—and then come back again next month, when once again Silhouette Intimate Moments brings you six of the best and most exciting romances around.

  Yours,

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Executive Senior Editor

  * * *

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S 3010 Walden Ave, P.O Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian PO. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont L2A 5X3

  * * *

  RACHEL LEE

  INVOLUNTARY DADDY

  Books by Rachel Lee

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  An Officer and a Gentleman #370

  Serious Risks #394

  Defying Gravity #430

  *Exile’s End #449

  *Cherokee Thunder #463

  *Miss Emmaline and the Archangel #482

  *Ironheart #494

  *Lost Warriors #535

  *Point of No Return #566

  *A Question of Justice #613

  *Nighthawk #781

  *Cowboy Comes Home #865

  *Involuntary Daddy #955

  *Conard County

  Silhouette Shadows

  Imminent Thunder #10

  *Thunder Mountain #37

  Silhouette Books

  *A Conard County Reckoning

  *Conard County. Boots & Badges

  Montana Mavericks

  Cowboy Cop #12

  World’s Most Eligible Bachelors

  *The Catch of Conard County

  Silhouette Shadows Short

  Story Collection 1994

  “The Ancient One”

  RACHEL LEE

  wrote her first play in the third grade for a school assembly, and by the age of twelve she was hooked on writing. She’s lived all over the United States, on both the East and West coasts, and now resides in Florida.

  Having held jobs as a security officer, real-estate agent and optician, she uses these, as well as her natural flair for creativity, to write stories that are undeniably romantic. “After all, life is the biggest romantic adventure of all—and if you’re open and aware, the most marvelous things are just waiting to be discovered.”

  To Deletta Walton,

  for suggesting that Nate might have a brother.

  Of just such things, entire books are born.

  Acknowledgments

  My sincere thanks to Vicki Lemonds, Walta Slagle and

  Pat Bonano for their timely and helpful responses to

  my questions about juvenile onset diabetes.

  Within the dramatic requirements of the book,

  I tried to stay true to all you taught me.

  Prologue

  Rafe Ortiz slouched his way into the Drug Enforcement Agency offices looking as though he was ready for a trip on somebody’s yacht. He wore a white cotton shirt, razor-creased khaki slacks and deck shoes. His inky-black hair was caught in a little ponytail at the back, and a large diamond winked in his left earlobe.

  It was eight o’clock in the morning, and he hadn’t slept in nearly forty-eight hours. The only thing he could think about right now was his bed—if he could remember where he really lived. The past six months undercover had made his real life seem distant, as if it belonged to someone else. As usual, he had the feeling that he didn’t know who he was, that he had never known.

  It was a safe way to live, playing one role or another, always acting a part. At least until he got tired. Then everything started to get jumbled, like the pieces of a puzzle he couldn’t quite put together.

  He needed sleep. The adrenaline rush had quit hours ago when he had arrested LeVon Henry and his crowd, and he’d been running on empty ever since. After another hour or so here at the office tying up loose ends, he was going to split and rediscover where he’d left his own bed six months ago.

  “Rafe?” The far too pretty receptionist with the brilliant white teeth smiled at him. He saw her so rarely that he could never remember her name, but he always remembered her teeth. He had the feeling she was hoping he would ask her out sometime, but he never would. There was no room in his life for anything except work.

  “Yeah?”

  “Seton Hospital called. Some friend of yours is in critical condition and asking for you.”

  Rafe stilled. His mind rifled quickly through the agents he worked with and could come up with no one who should be sick or injured. Hell, he’d talked to them all in the last couple of hours as they’d wrapped up the bust. “Who?”

  “Raquel Molina.”

  In the instant before he slammed the door on any possible feelings, he felt his heart skip a beat. His face suddenly felt wooden. “She’s not a friend of mine.”

  “All I know is she’s asking for you. Who is she?”

  “The sister of Eduardo Molina.”

  Carefully penciled eyebrows lifted. “The guy you busted last spring? Hey, he was a real big fish, wasn’t he?”

  Rafe didn’t answer.

  “Maybe she’s got some i
nfo for you, wants to get it off her chest before she dies.”

  Rafe looked down at her, his eyes burning oddly. “Yeah. Maybe.” Turning on his heel, he headed for the door.

  “Hey,” she called after him. “Whaddya want me to tell Keits?” Keits was the agent in charge.

  “I’ll be back in a coupla hours.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Ortiz,” the young woman in blue scrubs said to him. She looked as exhausted as he felt. “Ms. Molina died about an hour ago.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He stood looking at the doctor as if she must have something more to say, something that would clarify matters.

  “It was a gunshot wound,” she said finally. “The police can tell you more about what happened. We did everything we could.”

  He continued staring at her, thinking that this was how Alice must have felt as she slipped down the rabbit hole.

  “I hardly knew her,” he said finally.

  Something in the doctor’s face tightened. “Really? Well, there is this little problem you need to take care of.”

  “Problem?”

  “She wanted you to take the child away from Miami, away from her family.”

  “Child?” Raquel didn’t have a child. At least, not one she’d told him about. “What child?”

  The doctor’s expression grew distinctly disapproving.

  “We delivered an eight-pound baby boy by cesarean just before she died. Mr. Ortiz, you’re a father.”

  Chapter 1

  Rafe Ortiz sat facing Kate Keits across her desk. As bosses went, Keits wasn’t as bad as some he’d had. Right now, though, she was irritating the hell out of him. She was a slender brunette who always looked as if everything in her life was in order. Looking at her reminded him of how out of control his life had gotten in the past couple of months.

  “You’re sure it’s your kid, Rafe?” she asked. “It’d be just like those damn Molinas to try to find a way to work on one of us. Especially you. You nearly brought down the whole family.”

  “It’s my kid.”

  “You can’t be sure.”

  “I can be sure, Kate. Don’t take me for a dope. I got a DNA test. The results came in last week. My kid. My problem.”

  “It’s a problem, all right. You have to find somebody to take that baby off your hands, or I’m going to have to reassign you.”

  He knew that. He knew as sure as he was sitting here that he couldn’t go undercover when he had a kid on his hands. But he also didn’t know anybody who could take the baby for months on end. At least, not anybody he’d trust.

  “You never should have gotten involved with a subject.”

  He knew that, too. “It just kind of...happened.” Lousy excuse. There was no excuse.

  “What about adoption?” Kate suggested.

  “I thought about it.” At least a dozen times, he’d even headed out for an adoption agency to set the wheels in motion. Every time he turned right around and headed back home—such as it was, his hole-in-the-wall apartment that he’d spent only a few months in since he’d rented it two years ago. Now it was worse than ever, smelling of baby poop and baby spitup, and cluttered with a crib and stacks of disposable diapers. Hell. That was what his life was these days.

  “So?” Kate pressed.

  “So I can’t do it. I’m all the family the kid has, unless you count the Molinas, and they don’t count for much.” He had the uncomfortable sensation that Kate Keits was trying to hide a smile. What the hell would she be smiling about? There was nothing funny in any of this.

  “So what are you going to do?” she asked. “I need you on the street. If you can’t go on the street, then I need to get someone who can. Make up your mind, Rafe.”

  He nodded. He’d been thinking about this little problem of his and had just about decided what he was going to do. “I’ve got family out in Wyoming,” he said finally. “Give me a month off. I’ll take the kid up there and see if they want to look after him.”

  “Sounds good to me. I’ll put in the papers. You can be out of here Friday.”

  It sounded good, all right, he thought as he walked out of her office. What he’d neglected to tell her was that this “family” consisted of a brother he’d never met, a brother who didn’t even know he existed. The guy was a cop, he’d heard, but he still might be some kind of bum he wouldn’t trust anybody’s kid to, let alone his own.

  But there didn’t seem to be any other option. He knew what foster care could do to a kid; he’d been there himself. He would die before he’d turn the kid over to the Molina clan. They’d probably have him running drugs by the time he was four.

  That left him, and any family he could rustle up. Cripes, he hoped this brother of his was a deacon in his church. Anything that would help him avoid the twinges of guilt he was beginning to feel every time he thought about giving that kid up.

  On the way home from work that night, he picked the kid up from daycare, then stopped to get more formula and a road atlas. He needed to figure out where Conard County, Wyoming, was, and how long it would take for him and the peanut to get there. And man, was he getting sick of these middle-of-the-night feedings. He was beginning to wonder if this kid was ever going to sleep all night.

  The kid had a name, he reminded himself. Raquel had named him Rafael. Just like him, except that where the name fit him, it didn’t fit eleven pounds of squalling baby. Too much name for such a little bundle, so he usually just thought of him as the kid or the peanut.

  The peanut managed to sleep all the way through the pharmacy and the bookstore, despite all the cooing ladies giving Rafe looks that left him feeling like a steak dinner in front of a starving person. However, halfway home, Rafe Jr. woke up and squalled until Rafe Sr. wanted to stuff cotton in his ears.

  You didn’t have to be a daddy long to know what that noise meant. Every time the kid woke up he wanted something going in one end or had something coming out the other.

  “Hold your horses, Peanut,” he called over the squalling. “Just two more blocks.”

  Two more blocks and he could change another messy diaper and shut the kid up with a bottle. Why m hell did anybody ever want a baby, anyway?

  Rafe was getting good at juggling things, so he managed to get into his apartment with baby, formula, diaper bag and atlas all in one trip. By this time, the peanut was seriously angry with the world.

  Rafe dropped everything else and grabbed the baby, heading for the improvised changing table on the bathroom counter. One thing you could say for the kid, he thought as he washed, dried and diapered the little bottom: his problems were easy to fix. As soon as he was clean, Junior’s sobs subsided into little hiccups.

  “Okay, little man. Time for food.”

  Rafe had tasted the formula and thought it was pretty awful stuff, but the kid seemed to like it, guzzling down a few ounces, then burping contentedly. One more change, then the baby went right to sleep in the crib.

  All in all, he thought, it was easy. He had a feeling it got harder as they got older.

  For now he had a little peace and quiet. It was time to heat up a frozen pizza, pour himself a glass of milk and kick back with Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care.

  He was halfway through the pizza when he nodded off in his easy chair while reading about colic. His dreams were filled with images of mountains of diapers and a sea of sticky formula. When he awoke a couple of hours later to the sound of the baby’s cries, he had the frustrated feeling that he hadn’t managed to escape for even a few hours.

  He forgot about that, though, after he cleaned the peanut up and fed him. The kid didn’t seem ready to go back to sleep, so he held him for a while, cooing at him and watching the kid’s eyes track the diamond in his earlobe.

  After a bit he put the peanut down on the floor on a blanket and watched him flail his arms and legs as if he didn’t even know they were attached to his body. He looked content and bright-eyed, though, happy enough just to be awake and alive.

  Maybe there was
a lesson in that.

  A knock on the door sent Rafe’s adrenaline into high gear. Nobody knocked on his door, and certainly not at this time of night.

  If he’d been undercover, he would have assumed it was one of his contacts. But he wasn’t undercover, and that knock signified danger. Someone he’d sent up the river? Someone with an old score to settle?

  He went for the gun that was on the table where he’d left it. He pulled it out of its holster, released the safety and went to the door, standing to one side.

  Then, in a moment of awful clarity, he looked back at the baby on the floor. For the first time in his career he was risking something besides his own life, and he didn’t like the feeling.

  Instead of opening the door, he called, “Who’s there?”

  “Manny Molina.”

  Hell! Rafe stood for a minute, unmoving. Manuel was the only Molina he’d never been able to tie into the drug operation. Manny seemed to be exactly what he claimed: a restauranteur. “You alone?”

  “Hell, yeah, I’m alone. I just wanna talk.”

  Rafe opened the door a crack and peered out. Manny was alone. “How’d you find me?”

  “How do you find somebody?” Manny shook his head. “I had you followed.”

  The hairs on the back of Rafe’s neck stood up. “Why?”

  “The kid. I want to talk about the kid. That’s all, I swear. And if you think I’m going to tell anybody else how to find you, you’re wrong, Ortiz. That’s my nephew in there.”

  “I feel a whole lot better.”

  Manny shrugged. “I got no ax to grind with you. My brother got what he deserved. What kind of guy imports drugs? I got kids of my own, and I don’t wanna see none of that stuff on the streets where my kids could get it. Raquel didn’t like it, either.”