The Firefighter’s Secret Baby

by Anna DeStefano

  “Whatever it takes,” Charlie said. “Randy’s not going to be thinking clearly. I need to be there tomorrow. I’ll know what he’s going through. I’ll know how he’ll react. If you can get me the information about whatever the feds have planned and then get me to Atlanta, I’ll take care of him, Emma. I promise.”

  Emma left their sleeping niece and walked into Charlie’s open arms.

  “You better take care of you both,” Emma said against his shoulder. “You boys. You’re trying to do me in….”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  TELL ME YOU BELIEVE in us enough not to give up now.

  Instead of answering, Sam had sat there with her heart in her eyes, fear consuming her features, while Randy fought the urge to demand that she stop doubting herself and him and what they could have together.

  Then Max Dean had launched into his team’s plans for tomorrow’s sting—none of which factored Randy into Sam’s suicidal trip back to Atlanta Memorial. Once the marshal had finished, Sam had walked into her and Randy’s bedroom like a zombie.

  Randy should let her go.

  But there he was, standing in the bedroom doorway.

  “You’re hiding from me again,” he said.

  Sam was sitting on the edge of the bed. The sheets and bedspread they’d shoved aside earlier were scattered around her. She didn’t look up.

  “I believe in you, Randy…” Her voice caught on his name. “I believe you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And you’ll be the best father I could have asked for, for our daughter. You’re the most amazing man I’ve ever met.”

  “But not amazing enough to include us in your plans with the feds who’ve been playing you for two years? Tell me why you have to do this alone. Tell me how to make you believe that my place is with you, fighting with you, whatever happens next.”

  She shot him a stare of disbelief.

  “Don’t you think I want you there tomorrow? I’ve always wanted you….” She looked terrified by what she’d said. “Why would you keep putting your life on the line like that? Max still isn’t sure who his leaks are. This is a disaster waiting to happen.”

  “Because—” Randy sat beside her and turned her shoulders until she was facing him “—if it wasn’t for you, I’d never have known what this feels like. After the destruction that my parents’ marriage was for my sister and brothers and me, this shouldn’t be possible, needing you this way. Now just getting by isn’t enough.” His eyes pleaded with her. “Don’t shut me out, Sam.”

  “Your parents? Randy, I’m not talking about domestic squabbles and an unhappy childhood. My brother’s business destroys people’s lives. He’s destroyed mine. When someone stands in his way, they die!”

  Randy felt his hold on his past slipping, because his memories weren’t his to keep anymore. Not while he asked Sam to trust him with the scariest parts of her.

  “I stood between my father and my mother,” he forced himself to say, “while my old man tried to kill her. I dared him to come after me instead of my mother or Emma or one of my brothers, even though I was the smallest of the bunch. And I was standing there the night my mother grabbed his gun and shot him in the head to protect us.”

  Randy closed his eyes against the flashbacks, and the rush of guilt that came with not being able to stop what had happened. The same guilt that he knew was convincing Sam to fight alone now.

  Then her touch was there, against his cheek, pulling him away from the emptiness. Her fingers were cool. Clean. The compassion she was offering promised forever as her fingers soothed away his frown.

  “I know what evil is Sam.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “I’ve spent a lifetime trying to fix that one night. My mother went to prison for protecting me. She died there. Now I give other people the second chance my mother gave my brothers and sister and me. But it’s never been enough. It’s never been real. Until now. Until I found you, feeling has meant living that moment over and over again and never getting to the other side of it.”

  Sam kissed him. She was crying. For him. And she was clinging to him as desperately as he was holding on to her.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. And she was. She was right there with him, understanding the way no one else could. “You were just a little boy.”

  “I don’t remember ever feeling like a little boy. I just remember being terrified, and deciding that I never wanted to feel that way again.”

  Sam nodded.

  “What was her name?” she asked. “What was your mother’s name?”

  Randy breathed in. Hard. The air wouldn’t release until he stopped trying to hold back the pain that came with his mother’s memory.

  “Jasmine.” He hadn’t said her name since her funeral. “My mother’s name was Jasmine. She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, until I met you.” He drank in the acceptance shining from Sam’s gaze. “She gave up everything to save us.”

  “And look how proud you’ve made her.” Sam smiled. “Look at how you’ve survived. I think Jasmine would be very proud of the life you’ve created.”

  “Would she? Am I alive? Are you?” He watched Sam’s smile fade and hated causing her more pain. But this moment was too important for both of them. “Surviving isn’t enough, Sam. I want to live—with you. Because I…I love you. And I love our daughter. I’m not sure what that word means. I’ve never said it to anyone. But there’ll never be anyone else I’ll want to say it to. You’re the one. Help me figure all this out. Help me build a life. Let me help you.”

  “You…” Sam’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. A lone tear rolled down her cheek. “You love a mob princess who—”

  “Who didn’t ask to be born into any of this.” Randy caught the flicker of doubt in her gaze. “What matters to me is now. And for the first time, I care about what happens tomorrow and the next day.”

  “I…” Sam kissed him. She buried her head against his neck. “Do you really believe there’s a next day for people like us?”

  “I believe in you,” Randy whispered, his mouth near her ear, “and what you mean to me. To our daughter. I believe you’re something amazing that I can build my life around. Can you believe in that, too?”

  “I…” Sam shook her head. “I can’t even think of a baby name. What kind of mother does that make me?”

  “You’ll name her,” he promised, “once you and Gabby are safe. Once you accept that you don’t have to do this alone. Any of it. Whatever happens, you can trust me to be there, no matter what.”

  “Not tomorrow.” Sam made a halfhearted move to pull away, but she let him catch her close again. “You can’t be with me while I do this.”

  “I can’t be anywhere else.” Randy pulled her into his lap, refusing to let go. “You’re the future I could never see. A future that’s worth fighting for.”

  RANDY, talking about the future. Their future.

  Sam had never wanted to believe in anything more.

  “Peter offered me a future, and he died for it.” It was the one truth Randy’s logic couldn’t reason away. “Our daughter needs—”

  “She needs both her parents,” Randy argued. “We’ll give her that.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.” Sam and Gabby—there was no guarantee where they’d be relocated. “You can’t—”

  “No, I can’t,” Randy agreed. “Not by myself. But we can do anything. I’m not stupid, Sam. I’m scared shitless. But I’m done running from what I’m feeling. Are you?”

  Sam swallowed.

  Then she was nodding. Clinging. Showing Randy that she wanted to believe, too, even if she still couldn’t put what her heart was feeling into words.

  “And tonight?” she asked. “Tonight can be just about—”

  “—now,” he finished for her.

  It was the promise they’d made each other in Savannah.

  She grazed his jaw with her lips. His chin. She shivered as his hands stroked up her back. Her own fingers dug into his muscled stre
ngth.

  “Just now,” he promised.

  Her mind traveled back to the abandon, the freedom, the perfection of what they’d found at that shadowy, Low Country hotel. It hadn’t felt empty, even then, when she’d reached for a stranger to get her through a desperate night. He’d become a lifeline she could hold on to. A hero she’d secretly wanted to keep forever.

  “Randy…” His lips opened at the very first brush of hers. “You make me want to…”

  He eased her back to the bed, as if she were the most precious thing in his world.

  “Believe…” The word was filled with need, promising her every impossible thing she’d been running from. “You can do that, Sam. I know you can.”

  “Love me.” She pulled his shirt free, baring his hard chest for the scrape of his nails.

  “But you’re…” He was trying to slow her down, to ease back.

  “Be with me again.” She pulled him closer. “Help me…I need to know this is real. All of you. I need all of you again.”

  He stilled her hands where they were fumbling with his jeans. He smiled at her pout of frustration. His teeth nipped her bottom lip, then he made quick work of his belt and the rest. He dealt with the endless buttons down her dress.

  His palms curved around her breasts. Her breath rushed out with his. Her next inhale was a needy, begging sound as his fingers explored and zeroed in on where she was most sensitive. His smile made her entire body throb. The knowing gleam in his eyes, the honesty shining there, sent Sam flying, free, opening her up. Her heart and her mind and her soul.

  “Love,” she whispered when they were skin to skin and he’d settled against the center of her. He was hard and as desperate as she was. “Love me, Randy. Always. No matter what…”

  “No matter what,” he promised.

  Their joining was the gentlest, most erotic moment of her life. Randy’s need was a fire burning through his touch, then through her blood until she was dizzy with it. But his body was careful, easy, while he watched her. Cherished her. Protected her.

  “You can’t hurt me.” Her body cradled him closer, arching and begging for more. “Not unless you stop.”

  “Not a chance, baby.”

  His hands, his body, his gaze stroked her. His talented fingers slid low to torture her with even more pleasure. From that first touch eight months ago, he’d known exactly how to make her come apart.

  “We could be really good together,” he promised as she watched his control shatter, too. “Stop running, Sam, and believe….”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “YOU TWO ARE window dressing,” Max said from the front passenger seat of the SUV. “That’s understood before we move an inch from this spot. We insert you safely, then you both stay put until this is done.”

  Sam stared out the window at the lodge. She was ready for what had to happen with Luca. But letting last night go was a different thing. Last night had been a perfect, timeless place neither she nor Randy should have been able to believe in. But somehow, together, they had.

  With morning had come the feeling that time was running out again.

  “We show up at Atlanta Memorial and look suitably concerned,” she parroted back. “Got it.”

  They’d gone over and over the plan, after Max had stopped fuming about Randy’s insistence on coming along. Max was nervous, or he never would have lost his cool. And her federal marshal was never, ever nervous. Not a reassuring development while Sam struggled to believe that having Randy face Luca with her was the right decision—the only decision for both of them.

  “We wait like live bait in the well-protected, private office of the half-finished physicians’ center attached to the hospital,” she continued. “You’ll have cleared the entire place, except for your people. A doctor and a nurse will get us settled and take our daughter’s stand-in away, then Luca shows up to finish me off.”

  “He’ll never get near you,” Max assured her. “APD and FBI will be swarming the place, all plain clothes. The site will be secure, agents and deputies only.”

  “But?” Randy asked, speaking up for the first time. He’d let Sam take the lead soothing Max. “If you’re so confident Luca will know we’re coming, there’s a good chance your leak will be on site as well, right?”

  “After the debacle at the first hotel, yes,” Max admitted. “It’s very likely.”

  “So why wouldn’t he know this office you’re taking us to will be flooded with feds and local law enforcement?”

  “We suspect he will.”

  Sam’s empty stomach cramped.

  “But…” Randy squeezed her fingers.

  “But we have contingency plans in place,” Max half explained, “to deal with that possibility.”

  “So much for window dressing.” Sam reminded herself that she’d agreed to this. That Randy had volunteered to put himself between her and Luca.

  Because he loved her, not just because of the baby or because he felt responsible. And Randy was fighting for her to believe in the same future he saw, when all she could really see at the moment was Peter’s stunned expression after Luca shot him.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t—” she started to say.

  “Hold on.” Max’s hand went to the device attached to his ear. He turned forward while he listened. “Repeat that,” he said. Several seconds passed. “You’re sure…”

  Randy’s thumb stroked Sam’s hand.

  His gaze never left her.

  “I’m scared,” she admitted.

  “Me, too,” he said simply. “But we’ll make this work.”

  “Where was he…” Max nodded at whatever answer he received. He glanced into the backseat. “At least we know the target’s in the area. He’s rattled enough to be careless, or he’s sending a message. Either way, we’ve got the situation we wanted. We’re on the road.”

  Sam held tighter to Randy, fear settling deep.

  How much did her brother know? How much was Luca willing to risk to get to her?

  “Your brother’s in Atlanta,” Max said. “And he just might be desperate enough to take our bait.”

  “And you know this how?” Randy asked.

  “We have no flight records of him landing at any area airports. But…”

  “Just say it!” Sam yanked her hand from Randy.

  Max hesitated.

  “APD found a body near your brother’s Atlanta office this morning,” he said. “Shot through the head.”

  “One of Luca’s men?” Randy asked.

  Sam’s ears were ringing too loudly to manage the question on her own. How could she be walking back into her nightmare and dragging the man she loved with her?

  “One of his point men for southeastern operations,” Max said. “We—”

  “Which one?” Sam had to know. “Which of his lieutenants did he execute?”

  Max hesitated.

  “Which one of his men did my brother kill, to send a message to me and anyone who might get in his way today?”

  “Carlos Forrelli.”

  Sam slumped deeper into her seat. “Carlos is…was my cousin.” Family. Nothing was sacred to Luca anymore. “Our aunt Tina’s youngest. Just a year older than me. We grew up together in New York. Went to school together. Played together every afternoon. Carlos would walk me home from school, no matter what else he had going on. That made him my father’s favorite. Then Luca’s. They knew I’d be safe with him. My father promised my aunt that Carlos would always have a place in the family. How could my father not take care of someone who was that committed to taking care of me? He…I…one night, I even told Luca I might be in love with him. It was just a silly crush but…”

  That had been fifteen years ago. It seemed like just yesterday. She and Luca and Carlos had been inseparable. Now, look what had happened.

  “He was one of the men who’ve been after Sam?” Randy asked.

  “Him or one of his people,” Max said. “He’s been doing a lousy job of getting her back to Luca, to the point that we’
ve thought maybe he was intentionally letting her slip out of his grasp.”

  “On purpose?” Sam asked.

  Had Carlos been why she and the baby had survived the accident? Why whoever had been chasing her during the storm hadn’t circled back and finished her off before the rescue teams could arrive? Was her cousin why the attack at the hotel had failed? Why the threat hadn’t come until after her daughter was out of the building?

  Sam had avoided Luca so many times since being relocated. She’d been lucky, no matter how she’d tempted fate.

  Oh, Carlos…

  Of course Luca would have wanted to get his affairs in order, once he hit town. She didn’t put it past her brother to have known all along that Carlos couldn’t be trusted to finish her off. Luca would have enjoyed allowing their cousin to dig his own grave, while Luca waited to make an example of Carlos when it would achieve maximum impact.

  “Are you okay?” Randy asked.

  “Are we clear what happens when we get to the physicians’ center?” Max pressed before she could answer. “My people cover every move that’s made once we hit Atlanta. The only way I can guarantee your safety is if—”

  “We hand over the baby, then sit there with targets on our chests while you neutralize the threat to Sam’s and my daughter’s lives,” Randy finished for him. “I think that’s clear enough.”

  Momentarily satisfied, Max nodded for the agent beside him to head out. Their black SUV cleared the lodge’s parking lot. Their entourage drove toward the adjoining rural highway—a matching SUV in front of them, with two more falling in line behind.

  “The target is Luca,” Max reminded them, “not just whichever poor bastard he has riding shotgun, or whoever my team’s damn leak turns out to be. We bring Luca down, and the Montgomery family gets their lives back. If we don’t—”

  “You can’t promise any of us will ever be safe.” Sam sat straighter.

  She bit her lip until her eyes watered. The sting of it was oddly centering. Blinking back her tears, she glanced up at Randy’s face. His expression was set. Determined. Her invincible rescue hero was in this to win it. To win her.