by Lisa Childs
“You have a concussion,” Nick said, as if he needed to remind the man. Then he turned toward Lars. “They’re going to keep him overnight.”
“So much for patient privacy laws,” Manny grumbled, which was ironic coming from a man who struggled to keep anything secret.
“What happened?” Lars asked.
Manny shook his head then groaned. “Got ran off the road, man. I thought it was you.”
Indignation had Lars bristling. “You thought I would run you off the road?” With his sister in the car? With his nephew? Manny must have hit his head hard.
“I thought it was you following us,” Manny explained. “Otherwise I would have shaken the tail.”
Guilt struck Lars with a sharp pang in his heart. He should have been there. But he’d believed that Emilia had wanted nothing to do with him anymore, not after the way he’d treated her at the police department. He’d acted like such a jackass. He only hoped she would forgive him.
He didn’t have to wait long to find out as a nurse pushed Emilia into the room. She looked so small and fragile sitting in a wheelchair. Like Manny, she had a bandage on her head.
“Does she have a concussion?” he asked the nurse.
The woman looked at him but shook her head. He didn’t know if she was assuring him that his sister didn’t have one or if she couldn’t tell him because of the privacy laws.
Hoping Emilia would talk to him, he dropped to his knees in front of her. “Are you okay?”
She stared up at him, and tears pooled in her pale blue eyes. She wasn’t all right.
Was she still furious with him? Emilia was the kind of woman who cried when she got angry or sad or happy. He couldn’t tell what her tears meant.
“Do you have a concussion?” he asked.
“No,” she replied.
He stared at her. Except for the bandage on her head and the old one on her wrist, she didn’t appear to have any other injuries. “Then you’re all right?”
She shook her head. “Nooo...”
“What’s wrong?” Was she still angry with him? “I’m sorry, sweetheart.” He probably should have started with the apology. “I know I’ve been acting like an ass. I never should have yelled at you.”
Her voice cracked, “Dane...”
“Or Dane,” he agreed. “I never should have yelled at him. He’s been trying to keep you safe.” And instead of doing that, Lars had made things worse.
One of his fiancée’s hands gripped his shoulder while she balanced his nephew on her other arm.
“I know,” Emilia murmured. “But I shot him.”
“What?” Lars asked, shock gripping him. “You shot him?”
The tears in her eyes spilled over and trailed down her pale face. “I—I didn’t mean to,” she said. “I was shooting at the guy who ran us off the road.”
Lars turned toward Manny now. “What the hell happened?”
Manny shrugged. “I don’t know. After we got run off the road, I was unconscious. I couldn’t help her. So she took my gun. She protected her son.”
“Did you get him?” Nikki asked. “Did you shoot the guy who’s been terrorizing you?”
“He got away,” Nick answered for her. “I had started pursuing him when I heard another shot.”
“That was when I shot Dane,” Emilia said. “I thought he was the guy—that he came back for Blue.” The tears continued to flow.
Lars patted her knees as gently as he had when she’d been a little girl who’d fallen and gotten hurt. He wished he had a doll to give her like he used to. But she didn’t need dolls anymore. She had Blue. “That’s good then. You were smart to grab the gun, smart to protect your son.”
“But I shot Dane.” Her voice cracked now with regret and horror.
“Because of that, I’ll need to take her down to the department,” Nick said. “I’m going to need to book her.”
“On what charges?”
Discharging a firearm? Assault with a dangerous weapon? Or manslaughter? Had Dane survived? Or was his best friend gone forever?
* * *
“No!” Dane protested as Nick Payne pulled out a pair of handcuffs. “You are not going to arrest her!”
Lars stood protectively between his sister and his future-brother-in-law, so he was clearly not going to allow Nick to slap the cuffs on Emilia, either. He turned toward Dane and breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re alive!”
Dane nodded and touched his hand to the bandage on his arm. “The bullet only grazed me.” It had actually passed through and hurt like hell. But he knew how badly Emilia felt. She’d been hysterical at the crash site.
And tears continued to stream down her face now.
“I’m fine,” he assured everyone. “And I’m sure as hell not going to press any charges.”
“That’s not up to you,” Nick Payne informed him just like the officer had the day before when he’d booked Lars for assaulting him.
“This can’t still be about Zeinstra,” Dane said. “You saw the guy, too, as he was running away from the crash.”
Nick shrugged. “I didn’t get a good look at him. And we don’t know why he was running. It could have been because she was shooting at him like she shot you.”
“She didn’t run us off the road,” Manny jumped to her defense. “That van did. I couldn’t see who was driving, but it was a big guy dressed all in black.”
Like the one she’d said had broken into the house and slit her wrist. It had to be him. But who the hell was he?
“The van was there when we drove up,” Dane remembered. “Did you find out who it was registered to?”
Nick nodded.
“And?”
“It was stolen from a dry cleaner’s this morning,” Nick said. “It’s been impounded, and the crime techs will scour it for prints.”
“He was wearing gloves again,” Emilia said. “You’re not going to find anything.”
She sounded miserable. Dane couldn’t blame her. He was frustrated, too. Mostly with Nick Payne. “Put the cuffs away,” he advised the lawman. “I am not going to press any charges.”
“She shot you.”
“By accident,” Dane said.
“Come on, Nick,” Nikki addressed her brother. “You know she was just protecting her son.”
That was the problem. The acting chief believed she would do anything to protect her son, even kill the baby’s father. But, albeit reluctantly, he snapped the cuffs back onto his belt.
“I won’t be making any arrests today,” he assured them.
“That’s too bad,” Dane said. “You should have caught the guy. That should have been the arrest made today.”
“You got shot,” Nick reminded him of why he’d been distracted from chasing after the masked guy.
Dane couldn’t criticize him too much. He’d chosen not to pursue the assailant, as well, when Emilia had screamed. Frustration gnawed at him more than the throbbing pain in his arm. “The guy keeps getting away.”
“Not anymore,” Nikki said. “We’ll all work together from now on.” She patted the baby’s back. “We’ll protect Blue and Emilia.”
With all of them working together, Dane wasn’t needed anymore. He could move out of Emilia’s house. He could probably even tell everyone he’d only been pretending to be involved with her, so that he could protect her. He doubted she would hold him to that secret anymore.
But he also knew that he wasn’t just pretending anymore—if he ever really had been.
* * *
Emilia breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed. She was home with Blue. And everyone else had finally left, everyone but Dane. Since he’d stepped in to stop Nicholas Payne from arresting her at the hospital, he hadn’t said another word.
She
couldn’t blame him, though. He had to be furious with her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. But she knew how inadequate an apology was for shooting him.
He glanced at her as if surprised that she’d spoken to him. With everyone else in her house—Nikki and Lars and Manny and Cole and Cooper and Nick Payne—discussing what had been going on, she’d been quiet except for answering their questions. But she hadn’t had many answers to give them.
She had no idea why someone was after Blue.
They’d asked her about Bradley’s parents, but she hadn’t been able to help there, either. She’d never met them. Brad hadn’t talked about them at all. He’d only talked about himself—about how athletic he was, how smart.
None of it made sense. So she’d had nothing to contribute to the meeting.
Neither had Dane, though.
He was probably tired. She should encourage him to go to bed. But she was worried that he might just go.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked.
“For what?” he asked.
“I shot you,” she said.
“You thought I was that guy.”
“I shouldn’t have,” she said. “He was wearing those black leather gloves, but after I started firing at him, it was like I couldn’t stop. I just wanted him to leave me alone.”
“Do you want me to leave?” Dane asked.
“That isn’t why I shot you,” she said, appalled that he would think that. “I really thought you were him coming back. He was so determined to get Blue.”
He glanced out the front window to where a Payne Protection SUV was parked at the curb behind his truck. “Nobody’s going to get Blue now.”
She released a breath of relief. He was right. She and Blue had more than one bodyguard now. They had them all.
“You don’t need me anymore,” Dane said. “Not now that everyone knows what’s been going on.”
She couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or relieved.
“Do you want to go?” she asked as her body tensed with fear. She wasn’t afraid that she and Blue would be in danger if he left. She was afraid that she might never see Dane again.
He shrugged. But then he asked her, “Do I have any reason to stay?”
They hadn’t told the others everything. But then no one had specifically asked if they were really involved or if they’d only been pretending to be in order to catch her assailant. If they’d asked, she wouldn’t have known what to say.
She wasn’t pretending anymore.
But maybe that was all Dane had ever been doing, even when they were making love. She wanted to make love with him again. She needed to feel him inside her, needed him to fill the emptiness.
And most of all, she wanted his arms around her when she slept. She wasn’t sure that she could even sleep without him. She could imagine all the horrific memories that would flit through her mind if she closed her eyes.
The van hitting the SUV. The SUV rolling over and over. Blue screaming. Those arms reaching out for him...
And squeezing the trigger of that gun.
She reached out then and skimmed her fingers over the bandage on his arm. “I really am sorry.”
“I know,” he said. “But you did the right thing.”
He didn’t say it, but she heard the word he left unsaid. Then.
She hadn’t always done the right thing. Not when she fell for Bradley Zeinstra’s swarthy charm. Not when she called Myron Webber...
So how could she trust that she was doing the right thing now—falling for Dane Sutton? How could she know that he wasn’t just another mistake?
Chapter 21
Dane sat alone in the empty offices of the Payne Protection Agency. This was where he’d intended to go that morning. But everything had fallen apart—from Nick having him brought in for questioning to Emilia shooting him in the arm.
He’d left her. It hadn’t been easy, not with her touching his arm and staring up at him with those pale blue eyes of hers. He’d wanted to lower his head and brush his mouth across hers. But he’d known that if he kissed her, he wouldn’t leave. He would sweep her up in his arms and carry her upstairs, like he had those other nights he’d kissed her.
Or she had kissed him.
She didn’t kiss him then, though. And she’d pulled her hand away from him.
“I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” she’d said.
And he’d realized then that he had just been another one of them. So he’d nodded in agreement. He was a mistake. Everyone eventually realized that about him.
“I understand,” he’d told her.
She’d shaken her head. “No. You don’t. You haven’t made the mistakes I have. The mistakes I make nearly get people killed.” Her skin paled. Maybe she was thinking of Zeinstra. Or Myron Webber. “Hell, they do get people killed.”
“Emilia, none of this is your fault.”
She’d shaken her head again, tumbling her hair around her shoulders. “I wish that were true.” She’d stared at him almost longingly. “I wish.”
He’d stepped closer to her then, as drawn as he always was to her vulnerability and delicate beauty. “What, Emilia? What do you wish?”
“I wish I was stronger,” she’d said. “Like Nikki. I wish I didn’t need armed bodyguards in order to protect myself and my son.”
“You had no one today,” he’d reminded her. “Manny was unconscious. Cole and I were gone. And you protected yourself and your son.”
Her chin had lifted with pride. “You’re right,” she said. “Maybe I don’t need anyone.”
He’d taken that as his cue to leave. He wasn’t sure even now if she’d really wanted him to go. But she hadn’t asked him to stay. She hadn’t given him any reason to stay.
She didn’t love him. She probably never would.
It was better that he left her before he got in any deeper. But despite all her bodyguards, he wanted to be the one to make sure she would be safe. He wanted to be the one to solve all her problems.
So he’d come to the office—as he’d originally intended—to pull the old case file on Myron Webber. Sure, he was dead, but someone might have cared enough about the sleazy lawyer to want to avenge his death. Or maybe he’d had a secret partner—like the guy in black—who wanted to continue what he’d started.
Stealing Blue...
Dane wasn’t any computer expert like Nikki. He wasn’t sure he could hack into the police department files like she did. But he could at least pull up the information Payne Protection had discovered about Myron Webber.
None of it was good. He’d stolen other babies besides Blue. Other women besides Emilia had been his victims. There were more people likely to celebrate his death than want to avenge it. And he could find no hint of a secret partner.
But then he remembered the man from the morgue.
The coroner had been working with Webber. He’d been helping to deliver some of those babies. And in order to flush out Lars, he’d claimed to have a body in the morgue that could have been Emilia’s.
Lars hadn’t gone to identify that body, though. Dane had. He shuddered even now as he remembered the pale blond hair spilling out from beneath that sheet.
He’d thought it was her. And when he’d discovered it wasn’t, he’d been so relieved. But he hadn’t been convinced she was still alive, though. He had been convinced the coroner was in collusion with the slimy adoption lawyer. And he’d asked Nick Payne to investigate him. How had that investigation gone?
Was the coroner in jail? Or was he out for vengeance?
That would make sense for why Dane had been attacked. It hadn’t been just to keep him away from Emilia. It had been for revenge, as well.
He reached for his cell to call Nick but then noticed the time on the small sc
reen. It was nearly 3:00 a.m. Too late or too early to call anyone. The last thing he wanted to do was piss off the lawman right now. Nick still had his suspicions about Emilia.
But Nick was wrong.
Sure, she’d made some mistakes like she’d said. Himself included. But she was a good person. She would never intentionally hurt anyone.
The pang that had struck his heart when he’d walked out of her house wasn’t her fault. He was the one who’d started thinking what they had was real—when he knew better. The only real relationship he’d ever had was friendship.
He’d probably lost those now. He was pretty sure that Lars still hated him. And Manny—he’d nearly gotten killed doing a favor for Dane. He probably didn’t want to be his friend any longer, either. And everyone had been angry that he’d kept Emilia’s secret from them, that he’d risked her life by thinking he could protect her alone.
He had been stupid. Maybe he deserved to be alone.
When he heard the rattle of the doorknob, he knew he wasn’t alone anymore. Someone else was inside the building. At 3:00 a.m.?
There was only one reason for someone to come inside then—for him. They’d learned last time that four guys weren’t enough to take him out.
How many were there now?
He reached for his gun and checked the clip. Hopefully, he would have enough bullets. Or at least he would have to make sure every one of them counted.
* * *
Nikki drew her gun as she walked into the dark house. Emilia and Blue were alone inside now since Dane had left a couple hours ago. But were they alone?
Nikki had been carefully watching the house from the SUV across the street. So she’d noticed the faint glow of a light moving through the rooms. Someone with a flashlight?
Had someone broken in on her watch?
She would never forgive herself if something happened to Emilia and Blue. And neither would Lars. Hers would be the shortest engagement ever because it would end days after it had begun.
But she wasn’t worried about herself right now. Or even about Lars. She was worried about Emilia and Blue.
