The Firefighter’s Secret Baby

by Anna DeStefano

  “I HAVE TO GET Gabby!” Sam wouldn’t leave without Gabriella. “Not now. Not after—”

  “You can’t go back. You’re a threat to everyone you care about. No contact is the only choice, until Luca’s neutralized.”

  “But she’s my sister! She’s all I have left.”

  “If you love her, you’ll walk away.”

  “No!”

  “Sam, calm down. You came to us. Wake up and see the danger you’re in. Do the only thing that keeps you and your sister safe. Wake up, Sam…Sam…”

  “Sam…Wake up. Sam!”

  She jerked from the dream. She squinted against the glare from the bedside table’s lamp. Max was standing over her.

  Sitting up was a mistake. Pain ripped down her arm from her injured shoulder. Her head was on fire where she’d been stitched up. Where was she? Her hand slipped to her belly. No baby. No! Where was her daughter? What had happened? What—

  Reality flashed back, faster this time. But the rush wasn’t any less painful. Her baby and Randy were gone. All Max had said when he’d left her room on the psych ward was that he’d handle her latest screw-up—somehow. The next morning, his deputies had gotten Sam into a car once her doctor released her, though she was still hooked up to an IV. They’d driven her God knew where. Not that she cared about anything but what she was leaving behind.

  She could do this, she reminded herself. Starting over—again. She’d keep fighting until Luca was out of her life for good. As long as she knew the people she cared about were safe, she could do this. And she’d do it right this time.

  “How long has she been out?” Max asked someone.

  “She fell asleep as soon as we got here,” a woman responded—the female marshal whose job seemed to be to watch Sam breathe.

  Sam lost her battle to keep her eyes open and slumped back to the pillows.

  “Do you really think it’s wise to have them both in one place?” the woman asked.

  “You got any better ideas?” Max challenged. “Whatever it takes to keep this situation from blowing apart further, that’s what we’re doing today.”

  Sam’s head was going to explode if they didn’t stop arguing.

  “Please,” she said, “take your Sam’s a total screw-up conversation into the other room, before—”

  A baby’s cry pierced through her pounding head. Through her heart. She pushed herself to sit at the edge of the bed.

  The tacky hotel room spun around her until she blinked it into focus. And there he was: a tall, bewildered-looking man standing just inside the bedroom’s door, holding a squirming baby girl as if he didn’t quite know what to do with her.

  “Randy?”

  He said something. Something Sam couldn’t hear over the disgruntled sounds being made by the beautiful creature in his arms. Randy stared back at her, his expression hardening. He took a step closer, a hand reaching out as if he wasn’t completely sure she was real. But Sam cringed away.

  It must still be a dream—Randy and their daughter standing in front of her.

  No, it was a nightmare!

  “Get her away from me,” Sam begged as the shadows closed in. She clenched her fists until her nails dug into her skin. The pain kept her from grabbing her daughter close and never letting her go.

  Then there was only darkness. The feeling of a strong, familiar grip catching her. The emptiness of knowing that her baby was safer anywhere but with her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “…WRONG WITH HER?” the voice was saying. “Sam? Wake up, baby.”

  Baby.

  Randy…

  Her mind slipped away from a reality she couldn’t face. The dream she’d been having was better. A dream of Randy calling her baby, their one night together.

  “Tell me your name, baby.” Magical hands were molding her body, sending sensation sizzling up her spine and outward to every nerve ending, until there was more pleasure than should be possible…

  “I don’t even know your name.” His teeth nipped the sensitive curve of her neck.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” She curled into his body, wrapping herself up in the anonymity they’d agreed to.

  “It’s…You’re amazing.” He cupped her waist, his words slurring when she knew for a fact that he was stone-cold sober.

  She’d watched him party with his buddies. St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah was a crazy, all-day celebration. A southern-fried Mecca calling pilgrims from hundreds of miles away. All were welcome—anyone, that is, who wanted to cut loose and revel and get stupid drunk until they stumbled back to their hotels. But Randy, the only name she’d let him give her, had clearly been the designated Boy Scout of his group, in charge of keeping the other guys out of jail while they got their wild on.

  He’d had only one beer that she’d seen, while he’d spent most of the day staring at her from the doorway of a pub across the street. She’d watched him back from her table beside a River Street bistro. A bottle of wine of her own later, one of Randy’s disarming smiles, and she’d agreed to meet him in the lobby of his hotel. Not that wine was all that had driven her to this recklessness.

  Stretched above her on his bed, he was every predatory and possessive and protective dream she’d ever had. But he was also easing away.

  “Where are you going?” She clung to him.

  When she sat up, the sexually rumpled woman reflecting back at her from the mirrored bureau was a stranger. He tugged the hand she reached toward him to his lips and gave it a kiss.

  “An A-bomb couldn’t move me from this bed.” His chuckle was a sinful thing. And in the charming smile that followed, Sam caught a glimpse of the devilish boy he must have once been. “But you have to tell me your name. I want to do things to you I have no business wanting with someone I have to call baby.”

  “I don’t mind being your baby tonight.” She traced a nail across his bottom lip, then slipped her fingers under the collar of his Grateful Dead T-shirt. Then across crisp hair that was a shade darker than the thick waves of golden brown covering his head. “That’s what we said, right? Just tonight?”

  “Just tonight.” His touch tickled and tantalized beneath the neckline of her sundress. He’d done this before. He was a master at it. “So, you’re not a woman looking for relationship drama?”

  “God, no!” No more drama.

  “Me neither.” He was just a simple country guy in town for a good time, he’d assured her. “No interest in more than one night?”

  Her head shook once.

  Her bangs fluttered into her eyes.

  “Now is all I have,” she whispered.

  He seemed fascinated with the effect her next breath had on the cleavage spilling out of her loosened dress. “So tomorrow it’s back to the real world you left behind when you decided to make my weekend coming down here?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Wherever you’re going, it’s gotta be far from here. A woman like you doesn’t belong in a small town like this.” Coming from another man, it might have been an insult. But somehow this stranger’s wicked glance down her body and back up again made Sam feel cherished for who she was—even though he knew absolutely nothing about her. “A woman like you belongs in a pampered penthouse on top of some Manhattan skyscraper.”

  He’d asked more than once where she was from. How did she tell him she didn’t belong anywhere anymore, and most definitely not New York?

  He stroked her breast. His brown eyes sparked to flame as his thumb found her nipple.

  “Okay, we’ll forget about where home is. Just give me a name.” He edged down the flimsy strap of her sundress. Lowered his head. “Otherwise, I’m afraid I might have to stop and—”

  “S…Sam…” The name slipped past her control, because he couldn’t stop. She couldn’t bear it.

  It was just a first name. She’d never see him again after tonight. There were no ties between them. She and Gabby would still be safe.

  “My name is Sam.”

  “Now,
was that so hard?” His hands slid down her back, arching her spine. “Let’s get more comfortable, Sam, my girl.”

  From one blink to the next, her dress was down to her waist. His mouth feasted on the breasts she hadn’t bothered covering with a bra in the Low Country heat. Her own hands rode up his sides and around the shocking ridges of hard muscle beneath his shirt, until she could tug him closer. His body covered the skin his mouth had left glistening. She captured his lips with her own and allowed her mind to wander while her legs skimmed around his hips to cradle where he was hardest against where she needed him most…

  “Sam…Baby…”

  “…Sam? Baby, wake up…”

  His touch was warm on her cheek. His voice felt closer than her dreams. So were the sweet newborn baby sounds layering over the memory.

  Randy’s deep voice mixing with her baby’s sweet cries…Sam curled on her side, wanting to hold the moment close. A shock of pain streaked through her body, the reality of it unraveling the last of the dream.

  “Don’t go,” she cried, desperate to hold on to the memories.

  She smoothed her hand protectively down her flat belly. She jerked awake, her entire body shaking.

  “My baby. Where’s my baby?”

  “Shh.” His voice sounded so far away now.

  His voice.

  Randy’s voice.

  He was really there, sitting beside her and holding a squirming blanket that was emitting endearing whimpers that made Sam’s blood freeze in her veins.

  “Get out of here,” she gasped, remembering everything. Again.

  She was getting sick and tired of reality taking its sweet time coming back to her, every time her body chose to let her down.

  Enough with the useless dreams.

  Think, Sam!

  She was safe, in a hotel. On the outskirts of Atlanta. As far as Max’s team could transport her until they were sure her condition had stabilized. But it wasn’t far enough, evidently. Luca had a very good chance of discovering that she and her daughter had survived. Sam would be disappearing again, so no one else got hurt because of her. Except her protection had decided to bring the people most likely to pay for her dangerous choices closer.

  “And you call me reckless!” Sam glared at Max, who was frowning beside Randy. “Why would you bring them here?”

  Randy looked so strong and solid and real, sitting beside her on the bed. Sam closed her eyes against the crisp hint of his aftershave that was mixing with their baby’s sweet, newborn smell.

  The doctors had administered a drug to counteract the hormones that would have allowed her to nurse. She’d accepted the reality that she couldn’t see her daughter’s father again. That it was best if she left her child to be cared for by strangers.

  Except there they were, Randy and their daughter, close enough for Sam to touch.

  “Are…are you okay?” Randy’s voice held the same forced calmness as it had when he’d reached inside her wrecked car and rescued her.

  “No.”

  Sam couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t stop herself. She grabbed their baby from him and clutched the little girl to her chest.

  “Oh, God. I thought I’d never see her,” she said into the soft crown of dark brown curls atop her daughter’s head. They were her father’s curls. “A part of me was so sure I’d never get to hold her.”

  Sam and Randy’s gazes locked. He wiped away the tears clinging to the corners of her eyes. His hand was shaking. The growing confusion—outrage?—on his face threatened an explosion any second.

  “They told me you were dead.” Accusation crowded out the softness in his voice.

  “She is.” Max nodded for the woman who’d been watching Sam to head into the adjoining room. “And her child was never born. At least, that was our plan until you claimed paternity of Baby Doe. We had to let it happen so we didn’t get more hospital staff involved. Letting your family take the heat for your decision was easier to contain, once you took the baby home. You were never out of the sight of my team. None of you will be from now on, until this is settled.”

  RANDY STOOD. It was no doubt wrong to take pleasure in looming over Sam’s federal marshal by a good three inches.

  Screw wrong.

  He didn’t have the first clue what was going on or how he was supposed to handle it. He hadn’t had his emotional footing for over twenty-four hours, and feeling powerless was getting old.

  “And just what the hell was your plan for my child,” he demanded, intentionally excluding Sam for the moment and knowing it would hurt her. That was just too damn bad. He kept his gaze on Dean. “What would you have done if I hadn’t listened to my family and had the good sense to confirm my child’s paternity before you could get your lying hands on her?”

  “We certainly would have kept you and your family from putting yourselves and your baby at risk. Unfortunately, that’s no longer an option.” The marshal looked down at Sam.

  Randy couldn’t keep his own gaze from following. She was a bruised and battered mess, with one arm in a sling and the other hooked to an IV. And she only had eyes for the baby she was holding, which for some reason made him even more furious. Didn’t she care that he felt like an idiot for being played like this? Why wasn’t she terrified of the anger building inside him, because of how the sudden appearance of her and her secrets had ripped into his life?

  “I’ll be in the next room.” Dean turned to go. “My team will be working out contingency strategies. Get this guy on board, Sam. Stick to the basics, but get it done.”

  “But—” Sam looked up.

  “Do it!” The marshal headed into the adjoining room.

  “This guy?” A part of Randy wanted to settle back onto the bed and hold Sam, until all he could feel was the crazy things that happened to him every time she was close.

  Instead, he forced himself to remember his shock and panic when he’d been told she was dead. The agony of deciding to do the right thing by their child. The fear on his brothers’ and sister’s faces when a federal marshal had dragged Randy and the baby away.

  “You dump all this, whatever this is, in my lap, complete with a baby—my baby—who I took in, no matter how much being a father was going to screw with my life. And now I’m just ‘this guy’?”

  Sam flinched, but she didn’t look away from their daughter. A part of him was afraid for her still, even though they were surrounded by feds. She looked like what she was—a woman who’d been in a multicar pileup, then she’d had to deliver a baby for her troubles. And now there he was, demanding the answers he was due, while Dean left her to clean up the mess his people had helped make. A softer man would have apologized and calmed down.

  But Randy knew better. No matter how small and defenseless Sam looked, there was strength there that he wouldn’t underestimate again. A fierceness that he’d been instantly drawn to, when what he should have done was walk away. This woman was a fighter. A scrappy survivor in a passel of trouble who’d do whatever she had to, to cover her ass.

  “Are you okay enough to hold her?” he asked reluctantly.

  “I…I think so.” She sounded anything but okay.

  She was terrified.

  What scared her most? Him? Them? Or whatever evil had forced her into a situation where the suits in the next room had the right to run her life? Meanwhile the protection Dean and his deputies were supposed to be giving her seemed to be failing at every possible turn.

  Randy clenched his fists. It was ridiculous, the feeling he couldn’t shake that they belonged together. That he belonged in the middle of this mess with Sam. Beside her.

  “She’s so tiny,” Sam said with a sense of awe.

  “Didn’t you get to hold her when…” When what? “I mean, before?”

  Sam shook her head.

  “Everything happened so fast.” Her tone was almost as dead as Dean’s had been. “One minute I was delivering her. The next time I woke up, she was gone. Then Max was gone, too…dealing with you and your fam
ily…” She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. “Our baby would be safe right now, if neither of us were in her life. That sounds horrible…but it’s true. But I was so scared at the accident. I let myself forget…I’m so sorry, Randy, for everything. I never should have gotten you and your family messed up in this. Max never should have brought you here. I…”

  She was sorry. About them. About the baby. Their daughter, who would be better off in Sam’s mind, if she was with neither of her parents. He’d been longing to comfort her. Now he wanted to shake her.

  “Exactly where is here?” he demanded. He’d been too preoccupied with the baby to pay close attention on the drive over. “Because like it or not, Marshal Dean thought this was a good idea. And I’m getting damn tired of not having a clue about what’s happening to my life!”

  For a second, he thought she was trembling and he almost felt guilty about it. Then he thought she was giggling. Tiny, almost silent bursts of laughter seemed to be leaking out of her as she held their daughter tighter.

  Furious, he tipped her head up to find silent tears streaming down her face.

  “Damn it,” he whispered. The weight of his unwanted feelings for this woman and the child they’d made together settled deeper.

  “What’s happening to your life?” Her next laugh was more of a sob. “You’re not that blind. None of this is about your life.”

  She scrubbed the back of one hand across her eyes. She gave the baby a gentle kiss, then handed her back to Randy. A flash of pain crossed her face as she move her injured arm, but she didn’t make a sound.

  “This is about me and my own personal security team,” she said. “And me running from a world that’s so messed up, it makes me invaluable to the people who pay Max’s salary.” She looked at Randy holding their child, and tears filled her eyes once again. “It’s about me wanting something good and clean and miles away from everything I know, and there you were. And here you are. Again.”

  Randy didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to be part of her emotional breakdown, meanwhile she’d prefer that he didn’t exist.