Sworn to Protect

by Diana Gardin

  But it was always there. And knowing that it wasn’t true slices me open.

  We’re both silent for a few minutes, lost in our thoughts. But our hands remain linked, and when Jeremy speaks again his voice has lost the desperate edge from before.

  “What have you told him about me?”

  I meet his gaze. “Just that he was born out of love, but not all moms and dads live together. I told him that I didn’t know where you lived, and so far he’s been okay with that.”

  Jeremy nods, his expression thoughtful and anxious. “I want to meet him, Rayne. I want him to know who I am to him.”

  Standing, I walk to the living room window and glance out at the nearly dark street. A shiver creeps down my back when I remember what almost happened on that street less than an hour ago.

  I’ve had Decker all to myself since he was born. It’s been my sole responsibility to care for him, love him, and raise him. I’ve never had to share that task, and I never felt like I was lacking. It’s been a joy to raise him, even though doing it alone was hard at times.

  Learning to share him with Jeremy is going to be a challenge.

  But I’ve never run from one of those, and I want Jeremy in Decker’s life.

  Nodding, I turn to face Jeremy again, folding my arms across my chest. “You can meet him. I’m not sure I’m ready to tell him you’re his father yet, though. Maybe we can ease him into that after you two have gotten comfortable with each other?”

  Jeremy’s face falls a little, but he nods. “Yeah. If that’s what you think is best, Rayne.”

  He stands up and comes toward me, an unreadable expression on his face.

  Wonder? Awe?

  Why would he be looking at me that way?

  “I can’t believe you’ve been raising our son alone all this time.” He stops when he’s standing just in front of me. His arms reach out like he wants to pull me in close, but he stops himself, shoving his hands through his hair and turning away from me instead. The wonder dissipates and a tortured expression takes its place, a flash of pain chased by venomous anger.

  “How have you been doing it all alone? Where does my son go when you’re at work? Is he happy? God…I don’t even know what he’s like.” He shakes his head, a strand of his hair falling into his face.

  Uncrossing my arms, I use my hands to punctuate my words. “He’s happy. And healthy. I had my grandmother to help when Decker was a baby and a toddler, but she passed away about a year ago. I’ve been doing it the way most single mothers do…he’s been my whole world for his entire life. Neither of us has known anything different.” I spread my arms wide at the last.

  Jeremy throws his head back, a frustrated groan ripping from his throat. “It didn’t have to be that way for you, Rayne!” His voice rises a notch, but his anger doesn’t intimidate me. It devastates me.

  “I would have been there!” Pacing away from me, his long legs stride with purpose toward the window. “I never would have let the girl I loved raise our son alone. Never!”

  A fresh wave of tears prickle my eyes. “I…I was crushed when I thought you didn’t want our baby. If you didn’t want that part of us, you didn’t want me, either. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, he was a part of me. We were a package deal. And the way your grandparents talked…they were so adamant that there was no way you would want us. I shouldn’t have believed it…but I was young, and scared, and my parents’ betrayal made me feel so alone. I didn’t know what to do…so I ran.”

  A shiver shakes me, and I wrap my arms around myself again. Tears soak my cheeks, and when Jeremy turns to face me, his eyes flashing, he takes one look at me before the anger on his face relaxes into sorrow.

  “I feel robbed, Rayne. Time with my son…with my family…was fucking stolen from me. I don’t know what to do with that.”

  I nod. I’m wrung out, drained, exhaustion setting into me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. And the pure, unadulterated sadness seeps in, right down to my marrow. “I don’t, either.”

  We stare at one another, the silence stretching, twisting, reaching between us. And I find myself second-guessing every choice I ever made. I know I did what I thought was best for Decker and me at the time, but the pain in Jeremy’s eyes, the sorrow written in every move he makes, tears me apart. I wish I had believed in him. I wish I had believed in us. Where would we be right now if I had?

  Finally, I step toward him. My voice is nothing but a hoarse whisper. “But we’re here now. And so are you. We can make this—your relationship with Decker—right.”

  His gaze deepens, and I nearly fall into the wilderness of his eyes. “Yeah…I plan on it.”

  His voice is full of finality, of determination. The confidence in it makes me quake just a little bit.

  A car door slams outside, a noise that normally wouldn’t have phased me. But Jeremy’s gaze flicks to the window, and his body goes rigid. He closes his eyes briefly.

  “Fuck. This has been…incredible. Finding out about him. But we can’t forget that something really, really bad could have happened tonight if I hadn’t followed you home.”

  I pull my arms in tighter to my chest, fighting the urge to quiver. “Who do you think that was, Jeremy?”

  The sinking feeling in my gut tells me I already know the answer to that question.

  His eyes cloud over. “I don’t know. I’m gonna head back to the office to run his plate, but I don’t want to leave you…and Decker…alone.”

  Understanding dawns on me. “My friend Macy, from next-door. Her husband travels a lot for work, and she and her son are alone a lot. I’ll ask her if we can stay over.”

  Jeremy looks skeptical. “How well do you know her?”

  My mouth twitches. His protectiveness is…attractive. More than attractive.

  Sexy as hell.

  “She and Olive have been neighbors for a while now. Olive trusts her, and so do I. She watches Decker while I’m at work.”

  Jeremy narrows his gaze. “No…that’s not gonna work for me. I need to know that you and Decker are safe. I want to check you into a hotel. Just for the night, until I can do some digging.”

  I eye him. “You really think we need to?”

  He nods, and I don’t even consider arguing with him. There’s no question in my mind that Jeremy has Decker and my best interests at heart, and if he says we shouldn’t stay here tonight then I’m going to go with that.

  “I’ll pack our things.” Turning away from him, I head for the stairs. But Jeremy’s voice, deep and sure, makes me pause.

  “We’re not done talking about this, Rayne. I want to know more about…what it’s been like for you. I want to know everything.”

  He wants to know what it’s been like for me?

  Oh, God. My heart squeezes in my chest, a dangerous feeling that I haven’t had in years spreading through my insides like warm chocolate syrup. Jeremy cares, and not just about his son.

  About me.

  Maybe he never stopped.

  10

  Jeremy

  My brain is on overload.

  I have a son, and everything I used to think about the way Rayne left me all those years ago was wrong. She left because she thought I was a part of my grandparents’ disgusting plan to end our child’s life.

  My contempt for them, which I thought couldn’t be any stronger, grows.

  What if they had succeeded? What if Rayne had been forced to abort my baby, if she hadn’t been strong enough to resist them the way she had? I can’t begin to imagine the kind of horror that would come from doing something like that against your will. She might have never recovered.

  As it was, she left thinking I didn’t want her. Didn’t want our baby. The thought sends rage boiling through my blood, but if I allow myself to focus on that right now, it will consume me. It’ll drag me down to depths I might not be able to climb back out of, and that’s not an option.

  Right now, the mother of my child needs me to figure out who was tailing her
tonight.

  She’s scared; I can see it in her eyes when she talked about her boss. That asshole knows where she works, and where she lives. It’s only a matter of time. If he’s allowed to continue to hunt her, he’ll get what he came for.

  And I’ll die before I let that happen.

  Punching the code into the high-security door at Night Eagle, I pass through the entrance and head back toward my office. The light turns on automatically when I enter, and I pull out my leather chair and sit, switching my computer on and waiting for it to boot.

  Decker. My son’s name is Decker. And if his mom’s in trouble, he’s in trouble. That’s reason enough to want to help them.

  No reason to evaluate the burning need I have to protect them, like they’re both mine.

  While I wait for the computer screen to flash on, I place a call to Jacob Owen. If a member of his team is at the office after hours, he wants to know about it, and why. I fill him in quickly, letting him know I’ll keep him updated and ask for it if I need his assistance.

  A surge of adrenaline courses through me when the computer is up and running. This, I excel at. Computers are my thing, in addition to my Special Forces training. My skills in computer science are what got me here. It’s what I got my degree in when I completed undergraduate studies while I was in the military.

  Through the military, I learned a few tricks that weren’t a part of my coursework.

  Flexing my fingers, I dive in. First things first. Using Night Eagle’s secure, untraceable network, I log into the DMV Web site, quickly typing in the license plate from the car following Rayne. Just the thought of his audacity, the fact that he thought he’d get away with following my girl…following Rayne…with the intent to harm her is enough to reignite my fury. Swallowing down the rage, I study the screen.

  There’s a photo and a name: Kevin O’Shea. Grabbing my phone, I log his address. I might need to pay him a visit later. Closing down the DMV’s system, I use the best search device known to man: Google.

  He comes up as a private investigator.

  Okay. So Kevin O’Shea wasn’t working on his own, and maybe his intent wasn’t to hurt Rayne tonight.

  Relief, the purest form I’ve felt in a long time, settles over me. Now that I know the danger to her isn’t immediate, the muscles in my body relax. I hadn’t realized I was still holding that much tension, but I was. And I still have work to do.

  My phone buzzes on the desk, alerting me to an incoming call. Rayne’s name scrolls across the screen, causing my heart to thump in a wild rhythm in my chest.

  “Rayne? What’s wrong?” My voice is low, urgent when I answer.

  “Hey, Jeremy. No, nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to…check in. Decker is out for the night…he was excited about the hotel so it took him awhile to get to sleep.”

  Her voice sounds deeper, more gravelly with tiredness, and I can’t believe how the sound of it makes me picture her sounding like that as I lay beside her.

  I release the tension with a sigh. “That’s good, Rayne.”

  It’s also good to hear her voice on the other end of my phone. But that, I keep to myself.

  “Did you find anything out?”

  Leaning back in my chair, I study Kevin O’Shea’s face on my computer screen. “Yeah. Turns out the guy following you was a private eye. Maybe not dangerous, because it means the person who hired him probably isn’t close. But I’m still glad I was there. Didn’t want him camping out watching you and Decker.”

  She sucks in a breath. “It freaks me out, you know? That he knew where I worked, and now where I live. He was watching me.”

  Yeah, I don’t like it either. Not a bit. But my job isn’t to scare her further. It’s to comfort her. And now that she has me on her side, she needs to know I’ll never let anything happen to her.

  “Hey, don’t worry about that now. You’re safe. I’m gonna check a few more things out here before I go home, but I was thinking…do you and Decker want to hang out with me tomorrow?”

  Being that tomorrow’s Saturday, I can kill two birds with one stone. I can spend some time with my son for the first time, and also keep an eye on Rayne to make sure O’Shea isn’t still tailing her. Or worse, that her old boss hasn’t arrived in town before I have a chance to get the team on top of tracking him.

  I want to make sure he stays as far away from her as possible, preferably right where he belongs: in Phoenix.

  There’s a pause, and then she answers. “You want to spend the day with me and an eight-year-old?”

  There’s a smile in her voice, and it tugs on something so deep down inside me. Something I didn’t know was there before. “I’m gonna admit something to you, Rayne…it’s a secret, so don’t tell anyone.”

  Her soft chuckle warms me, heats my blood. “What?”

  “My Saturdays aren’t usually all that exciting. Just me and Night, unless the guys and their girls are having a barbecue.”

  She chuckles again. “You don’t say? Who’s Night?”

  “My dog. Can you guys be ready by nine? I’ll pick you up at Olive’s. Wear your swimsuits, but bring clothes to change for later in the day.”

  Silence across the line, and I realize I’m holding my breath waiting for her response.

  Come on, Rayne. Let me have this.

  She sighs. “Hell, Jeremy. I never could say no to you. We’ll be ready at nine.”

  I pump my fist in the air, but over the phone, I say, “Cool. See you then, Rayne.”

  “Good night, Jeremy.”

  Good night, Jeremy. I’ll be damned if I’m not gonna fall asleep dreaming about the day when she says those words from right next to me, in my bed.

  When I pull the Land Cruiser into Olive’s driveway the next morning my heart rate picks up in my chest the way it kicks in during the middle of a run. It feels like I’m getting ready to face an enemy of the state with nothing but my good looks as a weapon.

  You can do this, Teague. He’s an eight-year-old kid. Not scary. She’s a beautiful, sexy woman who just happens to also be your baby mama. Not scary.

  Damn scary.

  As my ineffectual pep talk comes to a close, the front door flies open and Decker comes barreling out onto the walk.

  Ready or not. This is happening.

  I jump out of my SUV, strolling toward him as he comes to a stop right in front of me. Looking up at me, he folds his arms.

  With none of his exuberance from seconds ago, he scowls. “Are you my mom’s boyfriend now?”

  Holy…I’m fucked.

  Glancing toward the house, I see that Rayne is nowhere to be found. With a sigh that I barely keep hidden, I squat down so I’m at Decker’s eye level. My own green eyes stare back at me, unblinking.

  Damn. He’s the perfect mix of me and Rayne…

  “Whatcha lookin’ at?” Decker snaps me back to the here and now.

  “Yeah, so…hey, dude. I’m not your mom’s boyfriend. If I was, would that be a problem?”

  Decker studies me for a minute before he shakes his head. “No, it’s just that she’s never had one before. I wanted to know why she picked you.”

  It takes a whole hell of a lot of strength not to fall backward on my ass with that statement. She’s never had one before?

  Instead, I school my features and give my son a smile. “There’s gotta be a first time for everything, right? Let’s make a deal, right here, right now. If I decide it’s time to make your mom my girlfriend, and I think that’s what she wants too, I’ll ask you first.”

  The kid smiles. He’s missing a tooth, one of his canines on the bottom. It’s fucking cute. I didn’t notice it before. How many lost teeth have I missed?

  He holds out his hand, and I grab it in mine so we can shake.

  “Deal.”

  That’s when Rayne decides to make her appearance, and as I stand back up again and glance at her, it’s another I’m fucked moment.

  She’s wearing a filmy black cover-up, hanging down to about midthigh.
Her toned legs go on for miles. Miles. Black, strappy sandals slap the ground when she walks, and as she approaches I can see her toes are painted cherry red.

  Might as well be fuck-me red.

  My eyes travel back up those long, tan legs to discover that the cover-up doesn’t leave much to the imagination. I can make out the outline of a bright red bikini underneath, and all I want to do in that moment is pull the thin material covering her right off so I can feast my eyes on what’s underneath.

  Her long, dark hair is piled up on top of her head in a messy knot, and when I finally scan her face I realize she’s wearing huge dark sunglasses.

  Stunning. Earth-shattering.

  Today’s gonna be a hell of a lot more difficult than I thought. What was I thinking, inviting her to do something where she’d be in a bikini, before I’ve even had the chance to acclimate myself to her presence in my life?

  Her brows lift above the glasses. “Do I pass inspection?”

  Clearing my throat, I nod and reach out to open the back door for Decker. “You look…you gotta know how you look, Rayne.”

  Decker’s glance passes between me and his mother. He grins. “She’s pretty, right?”

  I grin at him. “Yeah, dude. She’s real pretty.”

  Rayne reaches Decker, puts her arm around his shoulders, and pulls him to her side. “Decker, this is the guy from work I told you about. My friend Jeremy. Jeremy, this is my son…” She looks up at me, and I can read the emotional look in her eyes. It says, our son.

  “…Decker,” she finishes.

  “It’s real nice to meet you, Decker. You like boats?”

  Decker nods, his eyes filling with excitement. “I’ve never been on a boat. Is that what we’re doing today?”

  “Yup. You think you can handle being my first mate?”

  Rayne gives me a smile over Decker’s head, and man…that feels so damn good. Pride fills me up, threating to burst out of me any second.