The Firefighter’s Secret Baby

by Anna DeStefano

  The loneliness in his voice, the loss…

  He was no longer the untouchable man he showed the world. This was whatever had formed Randy. Whatever tragedy had left Emma to raise her brothers.

  Sam realized her hand was reaching toward him. She needed to take back every hurt she’d caused, every pain she hadn’t soothed. This man was her daughter’s future. It was dangerous for Sam to see a place for herself there. But he was making it impossible not to.

  When Randy’s fingers tangled with hers, she tugged him closer. Back to her side where she’d needed him all along.

  “I don’t want to get rid of you.” Her eyes stung from how good it felt to lean against him. “That’s why I need you to do the right thing. It’s not fair, but you have to be the grownup here, Randy. Nothing can happen to you I need…Our daughter needs you.”

  He brushed the bangs out of her eyes. His touch was soothing and safe. Perfect.

  “What do you need, baby?” he asked, catching her slip. “I’ve known a lot of women in my life. Enough to think I’d seen every way you can try to hook a man who’s immune to being hooked. But this is the first time I’ve met a woman more desperate to stay immune than I am.”

  “I…”

  Maybe they were the same. Both running from the past. Both going nowhere. Maybe that’s part of what she’d felt in Savannah, and every moment they’d spent together the last few days.

  “I want you and our daughter to be safe,” she made herself say.

  “We’ll all be safe.” He tipped her face up until she could see the worry in his warm brown eyes. “But not if you disappear from your child’s life, when you clearly care for her. She belongs with you, Sam. Let me help you fight to make that happen.”

  The way another man had promised to fight with her.

  She shook her head. “If you knew the whole story, you’d see…”

  A story she wasn’t supposed to reveal the details of. Max had made that clear when they’d arrived at the new safe house. Giving Randy or his family more information might compromise the prosecution’s case. Luca might walk.

  “I have my own past.” Randy kissed her forehead. Sam closed her eyes and drank in the caress. “I may not be being chased by a maniac, but I know what evil is. I watched it destroy my family. I watched him kill my mother. Whatever you’re mixed up in, I don’t for a second believe it’s your fault, no matter what I said before. And I won’t let it rip you away from your daughter. I know firsthand what that can do to a kid.”

  “Him?” Sam tried to focus on what Randy was saying. To keep her lips from finding the sensitive skin along the column of his neck, just where she knew a kiss would send his entire body into shivers.

  Evil had killed his mother?

  His touch was calling to her. His heartbreaking revelation echoed through her mind. Someone had killed his mother?

  Maybe they were the same…

  “Who?” she asked. “Randy, who killed—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He leaned into her touch, the sexual energy between them sparking. Heating up.

  “But…” She tried to hold back her next kiss, but her teeth found his earlobe and nipped softly, then harder when he groaned in approval.

  “Don’t you see?” he asked as she stared up into his stormy eyes. “Nothing matters right now but this. You—trusting me enough to let me help get you back to our daughter. You trusting us, the way you did in the accident, in Savannah…”

  “Us? This is just…” What? What were they doing? “It’s not real.”

  There was no us.

  He laid her back on the bed. He gently removed the sling from her arm. His body followed her down until he’d covered her with the promise that nothing would ever feel as good as the sensation of Randy surrounding her, loving her, protecting her.

  “Tell me you really want me to go, Sam. Make me throw you away, the way I have everyone else besides my family. Tell me this isn’t real enough to fight for, and I’ll leave.”

  RANDY HAD NEVER let the memories this close. He’d left the lost, angry child he’d been behind years ago. Now, the attack at the hotel and the very real possibility of never seeing Sam again were bringing it all back.

  She was serious. She wanted him gone, and it wasn’t just about wanting him to protect their daughter. Sam was trying to protect him. She really believed there was no other option but to face this maniac Luca alone.

  But Randy had her beside him now. Beneath him. Holding on to him as if he was her lifeline. As if she’d found someone she could trust with her secrets, the way Randy was certain he could trust her. Hearing her sigh in pleasure pushed his dark memories away. It made him even more determined to fight, to hold on, instead of letting go.

  Nothing had been real before now. No other woman had fit against him so perfectly. Wherever she’d come from, whoever this Luca was, Randy knew exactly what that world had done to Sam. But the answer wasn’t Sam giving her daughter away or giving up on him.

  Her lips were like tiny, stinging butterflies fluttering against his skin, down his neck to just above the collar of his T-shirt. His fingers tangled in her hair and held her head in place, a silent plea for her to continue.

  “Tell me you don’t want this,” he challenged.

  “This…” She shook her head. Her hand traced fire down his spine, urging his hips closer. “It’s just a dream…”

  Randy rocked against her. Gentle. He had to be gentle.

  “Prove it.” His touch cherished her tucked-in waist. The curve of her belly. “Show me how it’s not real.”

  Sam wasn’t like the other women he’d been to bed with. She wasn’t just one night. Since their time together in Savannah, she’d become a part of him. His past and his future. He needed her both places. He needed her, period.

  He pushed away long enough to walk to the closed door and lock it. He pulled the T-shirt off on his way back. Then he stood there, watching her watch him with so much fear and confusion in her expression, she looked as if she might shatter. But this was Sam. A survivor. He doubted there was anything she couldn’t handle. Even accepting him as part of her fight, instead of someone else to run from.

  She was wearing a flowing, blue cotton dress, with a long skirt and sleeves. Buttons from the collar all the way down to the hem. It covered nearly every inch of her.

  Randy knelt on the bed, watching her closely as he reached to undo the first button. Then the second. His body was screaming to take more. He gently smoothed the backs of his fingers over the skin he’d revealed. The softness, the heat, the thundering of Sam’s pulse stopped him. He wanted to savor all of it.

  He bent, nuzzling the sensitive curve of her breast. He drank in the resulting catch in her breath. She was hard and soft and capable and vulnerable. He wanted her skin, her body, her mind, her heart.

  “How did this happen?” He worked the rest of the buttons free. “How did you become something I can’t resist?”

  She shook her head. Not to say no, because her hands were unfastening his belt and then the snap and zipper on his jeans.

  “How can you get to me this way?” He undid the last button on her dress and spread the soft cotton open.

  Sam wore nothing beneath. A soft cry of distress was his only warning before she tried to cover herself with her hands. He pushed her arms to the mattress and ran his tongue between her breasts, down to her delicate belly button.

  “You’re sweet,” he whispered, determined to show her how real his feelings were, even if he couldn’t put them into words.

  This was the woman who’d carried his child. Their child who had been Sam’s only concern when she’d been delirious and out of her mind with fear and pain. How did he tell her what that did to him? Her bravery. Her sexy-as-hell grit.

  The reality of how close he’d come to losing her, twice, shook through him.

  Randy ran his hands up her quivering thighs. He couldn’t take her with his body for fear of hurting her so soon after having the baby. But he
could give her pleasure. He could block out everything for her but the reality that her body needed him.

  When his mouth found her sweet center, she strained into his touch, accepting him. Struggling to get closer instead of pulling away.

  SAM’S ARMS WERE FREE. She could have stopped Randy with just one touch. One word. She should stop them both from falling any deeper into this insanity.

  Instead, she kissed him as if her life depended on it.

  Her fingers curled into his hair. He was being gentle. Careful. She wanted the fire they’d shared. The need.

  “Please,” she begged. “Please take me away from here.”

  Randy’s next kiss held the edge she craved.

  “Where do you want to go?” He caressed her. Tantalized her.

  Each stroke and kiss and touch took her higher. Made her want more, which he was eager to give. Seconds, minutes, an hour maybe. She had no idea how long the sweet torture lasted. Until one second her sanity was a questionable thing. Then the next, it was gone completely. She was free. Burning free as she shivered and strained, her body crying for more while she was held and loved and praised for every second of lost control.

  “Again,” Randy demanded. “Not enough. Let me feel it again.”

  Randy was already building her back up. Pulling the pieces of her together, only to begin scattering them again, with each stroke of his fingers and lips and voice.

  Her hands tightened on his shoulders, trying to hold him back.

  “Don’t,” she begged.

  It was too good to be real, joining with someone this completely. And he still had most of his clothes on. She didn’t want this. The responsibility of it. The perfection.

  The next streak of pleasure called her a liar.

  “I need…” she gasped. “I need…”

  “Yes,” Randy whispered. “I’m here.”

  “But you…” He was still separate, while she was falling apart beneath him.

  He was an intense man. Aggressive in every part of his life. She could feel him holding back. Giving and taking nothing in return.

  “You need—” she started to say.

  “I need you.” The gravelly sound of Randy’s voice drove her excitement higher. “Just you.”

  The next wave crashed through her.

  Her body wouldn’t stop vibrating. Needing. Begging for more. She pulled until Randy was beside her, then beneath her as she crawled on top. She needed him naked beneath her. Now!

  “No, baby.” He grabbed for her hands. Stopped her from completely freeing him from his jeans. “You can’t. We can’t. It’s too soon after the baby, and I won’t be able to stop if you…Sam, don’t,” he wheezed as she bent to kiss her way down his chest.

  The memory of holding him in her hands lured her. The sound of him needing her as much as she needed him. The promise of how good they could be together. The memory of it had her stroking him and telling him how much more she wanted.

  “We can’t,” he grit out between clenched teeth.

  She couldn’t stop.

  She couldn’t let go.

  “Please, let me—”

  “Damn!” he gasped as she stroked him again. “You don’t have to, Sam. You’ve already given me more than you know…”

  Sam realized it wasn’t wild sex she craved after all. The frenzy and blind escape of Savannah wasn’t what she needed now. She needed to feel Randy lose himself for her. She needed the soul-deep connection he’d pushed them toward.

  “Let me hear you come apart for me,” she whispered.

  Randy’s mouth found hers. His kiss freed her to touch and stroke and entice him toward the same oblivion that he’d taken her.

  Everything she couldn’t say, she poured into her touch.

  Oh, God.

  I love him!

  Sam kissed Randy back and clung to him. She abandoned herself to giving pleasure and feeling his unguarded response and holding every second of it as close as she could. And when Randy found his release, she let herself believe that the moment would never end. That they had forever to feel this perfect. This complete.

  Shaking, still kissing her like he’d never stop, Randy turned her until he’d braced himself above her on shaking arms. He gazed down at her in a way that would shatter her if she didn’t make it stop.

  His arms snaked around her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She was perfect. It had all been perfect. So perfect, she sat up. She scooted off the bed when he tried to reach for her again.

  She grabbed the IV stand and shuffled to the spread that had been shoved to the bottom of the bed. She pulled it over her disheveled dress, too shaken to button herself back up yet.

  She needed him. Randy’s strength and passion and unshakable belief that they could carve something besides disaster out of all of this. She needed him beside her, protecting her and making her feel like they would have a lifetime of perfect moments like this.

  She wanted it all.

  But that didn’t change the fact that Luca was just as determined to take it all away. And that meant Sam needed Randy out of it, now more than ever.

  Not just because of the baby. It had never been just about the baby. She loved Randy. Maybe she’d loved him from their first night together. And she wouldn’t watch another man she cared about be destroyed trying to save her.

  It was time to let the dream go.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “NO,” SAM SAID while Randy endured her pulling away from him. “I’m not okay. I wasn’t okay the first time we met, and I’m not okay now. I’m being hunted. Someone wants me dead. No matter how amazing we are together in bed, that doesn’t change reality.”

  Randy closed his eyes against her reasoning and the images that followed.

  The darkness of the explosion at the last hotel. Their escape. Sam in labor, in pain, pinned in her crashed-up car…

  He jerked his eyes back open, stunned by the riot of flashbacks. Once a crisis was over, he never remembered the scene. He debriefed with his team. He learned from every call. But he never held on to the emotion of the moment. It never got personal. Except there was nothing not personal about needing to protect Sam, or knowing that she was still determined to leave him. There was no way to block that kind of pain.

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m not with you.” He stood and pulled his clothes together, finding his T-shirt amidst their rumpled sheets.

  As soon as he was off the bed, Sam sank back onto it, deflated. Alone already, though he was still in the room.

  He even understood her survival instinct. The reflex not to connect. That’s what made this harder. Because holding Sam had tempted him to believe that together they could beat their memories, as well as the man hunting her. For the first time in his life, Randy had let himself want a future with a woman. A woman who might always be running.

  “I never expected any of this,” he admitted. “I didn’t expect to meet a stranger, and instantly feel more connected to her than I have anyone else in my life. But I did. I fought it, too. But that doesn’t change what’s happened. Or how unfair it is, expecting you to feel the same way in the midst of everything you’re dealing with.”

  Sam inhaled slowly, as if steeling herself for an argument Randy wasn’t up for.

  He held up a hand.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. “You’re not ready for something like this. I understand.”

  He didn’t, but he had no business pushing any harder. Her life was impossible enough.

  “I’ll go see if I can get something more out of Dean,” he said. “Take your time pulling yourself together.”

  Sam’s silence followed him into the sitting area between the suite’s two bedrooms. Determined to keep moving, Randy crossed to the other bedroom’s door. He knocked but only waited a second before turning the knob and pushing his way inside. Pissed at the whole damn mess, he was ready to blast the first fed who crossed his path. But the people inside were already ripping each other to
verbal shreds.

  “I don’t give a crap what kind of emotional state she’s in,” a female deputy said to Dean. “She deserves to know—”

  “She knows what she has to know to keep her under control.” The rigid set of Dean’s jaw hinted that he hated what he was saying. The fist he’d clenched said he meant every word. “Otherwise, they’re both dead. The baby’s safe as long as her mother stays off Luca’s radar. If Sam refuses to stay put, then—”

  “What’s happened to the baby?” Randy closed the door to the sitting room.

  Sam might not see any place for him in her life, but she’d given him a precious gift that would always connect them. A daughter he planned to build his future around, even if Sam refused to be part of it.

  Every eye in the room swiveled to Randy. No one responded.

  “What don’t you want Sam to know?” he demanded.

  The new female agent took a controlled step back, as if she was bracing to counter an attack. Randy must have looked as deadly furious as he felt.

  Good.

  He pinned Dean with a don’t mess with me scowl and finished tucking his shirt into his jeans. The hell with who wondered what about why his clothes were a mess.

  “Your daughter’s fine.” Dean gave him his own bad-ass stare. “She’s being treated in a regional care facility near where the rest of your family’s been settled. One of your brothers and your sister are with her.”

  “What happened?” Randy bit out.

  Logic. Facts. Realistic options. Those were what he needed to focus on. He’d been running on emotion for too long. Making decisions the way he had been got people killed when he was on the job. So far, they hadn’t done a thing to help Sam or the baby, either.

  It was time to stop feeling and start focusing.

  Dean was staring at the floor. He looked up, inhaling. “On the drive to your family’s new location, your daughter briefly stopped breathing.”

  Randy linked his hands behind his back and took his own deep breath.

  God, Sam. When are you going to catch a break?

  “She’s…” He had to clear his voice before he could finish. “The baby, she’s…”