by Docter, K. L
Rachel was pregnant before she discovered what kind of man she’d married, and then it was too late. She quickly learned Greg would con his own mother if there was a profit in it for him. He’d been prepared to do whatever it took to get at the James family coffers, even lie about her not being Amanda’s mother.
Her pulse hitched. If she was truly Amanda’s mother, that meant Greg was the infertile one. Simon had lied and helped Greg use Rachel’s belief in her infertility to control and manipulate her. Is that why Simon helped her to escape California six months ago, given her money to get help for Amanda? He’d felt guilty for his part in the con? All those years, everything she’d endured to keep Greg happy to shield Amanda from her father…the memories raced through her head, made her insides turn cold. She placed her hand protectively over her stomach.
“Ms. James? Are you feeling dizzy? Nauseous?” The doctor approached the side of the bed and took her wrist in his hand.
Staring at Patrick’s mother—her baby’s grandmother—a whole new array of thoughts flashed into her head. She’d promised Patrick it was safe to make love without protection. She was carrying his baby. She was returning to Dallas. Would he let her go if he knew? How could she tell him? He didn’t love her.
She blinked. “I-I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just surprised.” She summoned a smile for the doctor. “To answer your question, no, there is no one else with Amanda’s blood type available. When can I see my daughter? “
Her daughter! Eager to see Amanda, she tossed off the sheet and tried to swing her legs over the side of the bed. Searing pain ripped through her left ankle, reminding her it was badly sprained, about the same time the doctor tried to stop her. “Whoa! You’re not going anywhere until we get a secure bandage around that ankle. Then, we’ll see about wheeling you in to see Amanda. Okay?”
Reluctantly, Rachel nodded and watched the doctor depart, her thoughts flying in a hundred different directions at once.
She was pregnant.
Amanda was hers.
Greg couldn’t take her little girl away. Ever.
No wonder he hadn’t followed up on his threats over the years.
She was so gullible.
She was having Patrick’s b-
Suddenly registering the silence in the room, she caught Evelyn staring at her middle. The woman looked up into Rachel’s eyes. “When will you tell Patrick?”
“Tell him what?” she prevaricated.
Evelyn’s left eyebrow rose. “You’re not going to tell me the baby belongs to someone else, are you? The night Ross and I came home, well, I wasn’t born yesterday, young lady. I can put two and two together, and I don’t think you’re the type to sleep around.”
You’re a slut, but a selective slut. Is that what she was saying?
Rachel forced down an inappropriate urge to laugh and settled back into her pillow. She fiddled with the sheet beneath her fingertips. “I’m sorry,” she said to the woman her own mother had called friend, the same woman who’d provided Rachel with a bolt hole to escape Greg. “I don’t know what to say, Evelyn. I-I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“You think I’m upset that it did?” Evelyn shook her head. “I’m not. It’s about time someone special came along and made my stubborn son feel again. I’m glad it’s you he fell in love with.”
She did laugh then, but without humor. “Patrick doesn’t have those kinds of feelings for me.”
“He may not have said it, but he loves both you and Amanda. It’s so obvious Ross commented on his surly behavior this morning at breakfast. Said Patrick had better hurry up and resolve whatever was wrong between you two before he had to knock both of your heads together.” She nodded at Rachel’s surprise. “And that man has to be hit over the head with a two-by-four before ‘girly emotions’ impinge on his manly senses.”
Certain Evelyn was only trying to cheer her up, Rachel gave her a wan smile.
“So, tell me I’m going to be a grandma,” Evelyn said with a broad grin. “Say it out loud once and it will be easier to tell Patrick.”
“You’re going to be a grandma.” She wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. If Patrick did have feelings for her…no, she couldn’t think about “what ifs”. “Please don’t tell Patrick. Not yet. I’ll tell him when the time is right.”
Evelyn’s smile faded. “I don’t like keeping secrets, honey. They always seem to come out at the worst time and bite you in the fanny.” She sighed as if at a troublesome memory. “If Patrick finds out on his own, well, I don’t want to see either of you hurt.”
“It will only be for a few days,” Rachel said. “I have to, oh, please, forgive me, but I have to wrap my head around this news myself. I promise, I’ll tell him when the time is right.”
When that might be was negotiable because Rachel knew the revelation wouldn’t make a difference to her plans. She loved Patrick too much to trap him into a one-sided relationship. She’d be devastated if he demanded she stay because of the baby, and not because he loved her. He was too honorable to demand she get rid of the baby and, God help her, she could never give up the precious gift she carried inside her.
No. Despite what she’d just promised her baby’s grandmother, she was afraid there would be no “right” time to tear her heart to shreds.
~~~
Patrick paused outside the closed door where he knew Rachel and his mother were talking. It took every bit of his self-control not to march in and order his mother to leave so he could take Rachel in his arms. He longed to kiss her angry mouth until she forgave him. He needed to assure himself that she was okay. He wanted to tell her that Amanda spoke!
He could do none of those things. The petite woman that had thrown him out of Rachel’s room glanced over the nurse’s station computer at him, and he walked on. Slowly. Beyond the nurses’ station, he could see the door to Amanda’s room was ajar so, if he took his time, he could peek in on her. It might be only a glimpse, but he had to take a chance. He’d promised her he’d come back. If she was alone in the room, he would try to slip insi—
His air seized in his lungs. The room was empty. Amanda wasn’t lying in the bed where he’d left her.
You miscounted the rooms. Convinced he’d made a mistake, he retraced his steps. No. This was Amanda’s room.
Pushing the door wide, he scanned every inch of the small space. No little girl. The male nurse he’d left her with was missing. He turned around to find the nurse hurrying from the nurse’s station in his direction. “Where’s Amanda?” he demanded before she reached him.
The woman stared up at him, her expression stern. “Sir, you’re not supposed to—”
Unable to shake the feeling something was desperately wrong, Patrick cut her off. “Where’s Amanda? I left her with one of you people,” he said. “Did she take a turn for the worse? Did they take her up to surgery? I don’t care if you think I have no rights, you have to tell me.”
“She’s right there, Mr.—” she hesitated when she glanced into the room behind him. Her forehead creased in perplexity. “They must have taken her up to Pediatrics,” she said slowly. “I didn’t see. I was talking to the father of the teenager brought in after your wife, I mean, Ms. James came in.”
“Check!”
He stalked behind her to the nurse’s station. He wasn’t encouraged when she pulled a chart from the stack—presumably Amanda’s—examined it, and muttered something before she picked up the phone. He listened to her side of several conversations as she tried to locate Amanda. With each call, his gut grew colder. He knew the little girl wasn’t in the hospital before the nurse hung up the phone and looked at him.
“Call security,” he ordered before he pulled his cell from his pocket.
He jammed it back in his pocket when he saw his brother and a uniformed police officer walk through the exterior ER doors. He met them and his father, who joined them from the waiting room. “You’re too late, Jack,” he said tersely. He wanted to tear into his brother. Jack had
returned with his promised security in under an hour, but that didn’t matter. “Amanda’s gone, and her nurse is missing.”
Jack spat a virulent curse that prompted a gasp of shock from a woman in the nearby waiting room.
“Jackson!” Using his crutch, their father shepherded the group into a corner, away from listening ears. “Get a hold on yourself, Patrick,” he said, his free hand steady on his shoulder. “We’ll find them.”
His dad nodded toward the uniformed officer, peered at his badge. “Officer Glenn, go find out what you can from hospital security. Have them organize a search for Amanda and the missing nurse. They’re here. We just have to look.” He glared at the back of the departing officer.
Patrick didn’t often see his father rattled. He didn’t believe Amanda was still in the building any more than he did. “Rachel,” he said. “Someone has to tell Rachel.” She’ll be devastated when she realized how badly he’d screwed up. Again.
“She knows,” his mother said from his right. “Her ex-husband just called her cell phone with his demands. She’s getting dressed. I tried to stop her, but—”
~~~
Patrick spent the next fourteen hours arguing with Rachel, his brother, Jack, his parents, and the cadre of FBI agents who’d descended upon the hospital within thirty minutes of Greg Bishop’s phone call. Patrick’s objections were ignored by everyone. The only reason he was standing in his parents’ living room watching Rachel get outfitted with a listening device was because Jack ran interference for him with the FBI. The big surprise was that Rachel, after a brief conversation with his mother, agreed to let him stay.
Running out of time to stop the plan Rachel had set in motion, he glared across his parents’ living room at the FBI tech clipping a mic to her lacy bra, as if the two women were alone in the room and not within viewing range of half a dozen male agents. Patrick’s fingers twitched to pull the edges of Rachel’s blouse together, so they couldn’t ogle his woman.
Get a grip. No one’s looking, but you and the female agent…and Rachel isn’t yours. You threw away that opportunity when you revealed her secret and broke her trust.
He straightened away from his position leaning against his dad’s easy chair as the agent fiddled with the microphone one last time and walked to the end table where her equipment case rested. With her out of the way, he approached the one woman who’d turned his world upside down and made him crazy in a couple of short weeks.
Rachel’s shuttered expression stopped him, but he was close enough his lungs filled with the luscious scent of lilacs and warm woman. Ignoring the “hands off” message in her eyes, he reached out and gently traced his thumb over one of the dark circles that testified to her sleepless night, a bruise from the accident stark marring her pale cheek.
His gaze traced the wide black and blue line that started at the top of her left shoulder, ran over her collarbone across her chest to disappear behind her blouse over her ribs, where the truck seatbelt had caught her in the rollover. He examined her arms below the short sleeves, the bruises and scratches from her attempts to save herself when she was pushed into the empty elevator shaft at Southgate.
She looked so fragile after the trauma of these past few days, he was afraid a puff of air would break her into a million pieces. He’d learned she was stronger than she looked. That didn’t mean he wanted her to confront her brutal ex-husband like this. It was insanity.
When she swayed without her crutch to support her, he put his hands on her arms to steady her. “You can’t do this, Rachel,” he said, his voice low, insistent. “There has to be another way.”
“Greg’s instructions were specific. I show up at the zoo or I’ll never see Amanda again,” she said, straightening her spine. “I don’t care what I have to do. I’m getting her back.”
That’s what concerned him. Her ex-husband wanted both Amanda and Rachel, so what was to stop him from forcing her to go with him when he had them together? “Honey,” he said, aiming for a more measured tone. “Think about it. He has no reason to return Amanda. She’s his ticket to your great-aunt’s estate, and his one bargaining chip to control you. You can’t just hand yourself over to him.”
“Do you think I haven’t thought of everything that can go wrong? It’s all I’ve thought about every waking moment since he kidnapped my baby from the hospital,” she cried, her voice cracking. “I have to do this if we’re ever to be free of him. Don’t you see that? I trust the FBI and Jack,” she laid a slim hand flat over his heart, “and you to keep us safe.”
Despite yesterday, she still trusted him?
Something loosened inside Patrick. He couldn’t stop what he did next if his life depended on it. He pulled Rachel into his arms and kissed her like they were alone in the room. He poured everything into the caress, his regret for what he’d done to hurt her, the feelings for her he could no longer deny, and his desire to claim her as his own.
When Rachel moaned in response and her tongue darted into his mouth, the tenor of their kiss changed. It became carnal, passionate. Their tongues met, retreated, promising seductive delights he didn’t dare explore without a bedroom door between them and the world. It had been too long since he had her beneath him crying out his name as she…a cough behind him reminded him the world wouldn’t wait.
He reluctantly lifted his head. “We’ll pick this up later,” he promised as he dug deep for control. He tugged her gaping blouse closed over her breasts and began to button it.
The simple action helped him to focus on the task at hand. If Rachel was going to do this he had to treat this like a mission, put away his reservations, and show his confidence that everything would turn out. “Stick to the plan, Rach,” he said, his voice rough as he tucked her blouse into the waistband of her flower-covered skirt. “Concentrate on getting Amanda away from Bishop as fast as you can.” He glanced over her shoulder at the agents watching them. “I don’t care what the FBI wants you to do beyond that.”
“They only want what I want, Patrick. My freedom. Amanda’s freedom. She comes first.” She jockeyed her single crutch under her left arm before she reached up to drag her fingers over his taut jaw. “I promise, the moment I get what we need or it looks like I can’t do it, I’ll grab Amanda and run in the opposite direction.”
Patrick crushed the mental image of the two of them running for their lives before it could threaten his self-control. He fell back on repeating the points she already knew. “I’ll be in the FBI van in the parking lot,” he said, “but, if you get into trouble, yell bloody murder. The zoo’s been open half an hour, so undercover agents are already in place around the rhino enclosure.”
He hated that he couldn’t personally keep Rachel under surveillance within the zoo grounds. Jack convinced him that they couldn’t take the chance. Bishop might recognize him. So, he was stuck in the van listening to everything go down. He was sure to go out of his mind until he had Rachel and Amanda back in sight again.
“It’s going to be fine,” Rachel said in a low voice he knew only he could hear. “I, we, there’s something I have to tell—”
She shook her head. An odd expression flickered across her face. “We’ll talk when this is all over. Okay?”
He nodded to reassure her. His hand cradling the back of her neck, he pulled her in for another soul-destroying kiss.
“Patrick?” Jack called over his shoulder. “It’s time to go.”
Releasing Rachel’s mouth, he watched her lick her lips, sigh, and then bend down to pick up Amanda’s doll—the only thing her ex-husband demanded Rachel bring with her—from the sofa cushion. As she stuffed the doll into Patrick’s old backpack, he hoped Bishop didn’t notice the fresh stitching in the fabric around the porcelain neck, wrists, and feet where the FBI had repaired the doll after discovering what the con man had hidden inside.
When Rachel straightened, she gave everyone in the room a brave smile that made Patrick’s lips thin. He knew by the tremble of the free hand she placed over her stomach
that she was terrified, rightly so considering the man she was confronting.
It was all Patrick could do not to put his fist through the nearest wall as he followed Rachel and the roomful of agents out the front door.
~~~
Rachel sat in the back seat of the cab—Patrick’s backpack clutched in both hands—and swallowed the gorge rising in her throat. She glanced at the undercover agent driving her to her destination and wished she dared tell him to turn around. The only reason she didn’t run straight back into Patrick’s arms where she felt safest was because the two people she loved were in front of her.
She watched the dark SUV Patrick, Jack, and two FBI agents rode in turn the next corner as they sped to get into place in the surveillance van already parked in the zoo lot. She would arrive at the front entrance by taxi. If everything went according to plan, she would have Amanda in sight within the next ten minutes.
Her pulse raced as she thought of the events of the last twenty-four hours, the roller coaster ride of emotions that had torn at her since Jane revealed her secret in Patrick’s office. Rachel’s anger with him. Their kiss. The attack on the road that killed Cook, and put her and Amanda in the hospital. Discovering she was pregnant with Patrick’s child. His revelation of her secret. Amanda’s kidnapping.
Her nerves jumped as she remembered Greg’s call on her cell at the hospital. “I’ve got the brat,” he’d spat in her ear. “If you ever want to see her again, you’ll do exactly what I say. Exactly. And I’d better not see any cops or that asshole boyfriend of yours, either. If I do, Amanda pays. You hear me, bitch?”
She’d heard him all right. She heard the brutality, no longer masked in his voice. The edge of desperation underlying his frustration and anger at being denied what he desired. Listening to his instructions, she knew she wouldn’t walk away from him with her daughter unless she obliterated his threat from their lives once and for all.
The moment her ex-husband hung up, she called Jason Sommerfield, the FBI agent that she’d dealt with in California, the man she’d given the evidence they used to arrest Greg the first time. Once she explained what she wanted to do, Sommerfield coordinated with agents in the Denver office to set up this morning’s sting. He’d flown in to assist and was in the SUV with Patrick and Jack.
