by Lisa Childs
He pressed his free hand over his heart, as if surprised himself. “Yeah …”
“H-how?” Dietrich, and Trent, had been so certain he was dead.
“Bulletproof vest,” he murmured. “Still got knocked on my ass, though.” He rolled to his side and blinked, peering around her. “What happened? Did Baines kill him?”
“No,” Trent said. “He’s all yours.” His breath shuddered out in an audible sigh of relief. “I’m not a killer.”
“You sound as surprised as I am,” Vonner said with a weak chuckle. “I also hear sirens.”
“That backup you called,” Trent reminded him.
Vonner admonished him. “The backup you wouldn’t wait for.”
“Not with Alaina’s life at risk.”
“But you risked yours,” Alaina said, watching the banter between the men and wondering how so much had changed between them. She wondered, too, how they could be father and son….
Vonner got to his feet, swayed a bit, then regained his balance. “Okay, I’m okay,” he assured them when Alaina and Trent both rushed forward. “Fine, just fine.”
“You sure?” Trent asked, his eyes narrowed, his face white with shock.
Vonner nodded.
Then Trent pulled Dietrich to his feet and pushed him toward the federal agent. “He’s all yours.”
Vonner dragged Dietrich toward the door but glanced back at Trent and Alaina, his brow furrowed with confusion. “I’ll be back to question you two.”
Alaina waited until they were alone, then she said, “I have questions, too.”
“They can wait,” Trent said as he pulled her into his arms. “I just want to hold you.” He held her tight and shuddered.
His relief—and his love—filled her. She didn’t need the words to know how he felt.
“I love you, too.” Heedless of her swollen lip, she pressed her mouth to his. “I love you.”
His fingers tangled in her hair as he held her head still, gentling the kiss. His breath sighed across her lips. “I was so afraid that I was going to lose you again.”
“Never …”
Trent’s fingers itched to get to the keyboard. He now knew exactly how to end the Thief of Hearts series forever. But Vonner paced his office, pushing a hand through his hair in a gesture familiar to Trent, as he did it himself.
“I thought you were both nuts,” he admitted. “This reincarnation stuff just seems so far-fetched. But you both really lived before?”
Trent nodded, still unable to comprehend that this man was his son. And he wasn’t the only one struggling with the reality of their new lives.
“And him, too? The killer?” Vonner’s throat rippled as he swallowed hard.
“He was the reporter—the friend of Detective Kooiyer’s,” Trent explained.
“And you were Kooiyer.” He lifted his gaze to Alaina, where she stood beside Trent. “And you were his wife.” The man’s dark eyes glistened. “It seems so unbelievable. But you all know so much—things that I don’t even know, and I was alive back then.”
“You were only three,” Alaina said, tears streaming down her face and dripping from her chin. “You were only three when we died.”
Vonner rubbed his hand over his face. “The people at the home said I kept waiting for my parents to come back and get me, that I didn’t believe they weren’t coming back for me.”
“The home?”
“I grew up in an orphanage.” He sighed. “Well, I lived there for a while but I finally got adopted when I was twelve. That was when my name changed. From Benjamin Kooiyer to Vincent Vonner.”
“Nine years in an orphanage.” The disgust for the man he’d once been filled Trent again. He’d been such a fool hell-bent on revenge when he’d had a son depending on him, a son he’d named for the man who’d betrayed him. Benjamin.
“The orphanage was a strange place,” Vonner said with a chuckle. “In an old church. It actually wasn’t that bad.”
“I’m sorry,” Alaina said. “I’m so sorry …”
“Hey, none of it’s your fault.” The steady thumping of helicopter blades drew Vonner’s attention; he lifted his gaze to the ceiling of the den. “I gotta go. I’m not sure how to deal with this, you know. I’m older than you guys are. I don’t know …”
“We’ll figure it out,” Trent promised, his arm around Alaina. “We’ll figure it out.” But then he released her. “I’m going to walk him up to the roof. Why don’t you go lie down?” he suggested.
She looked as if she wanted to protest, but exhaustion overcame her resistance. And she reluctantly walked away from them.
“And if I can’t deal?” Vonner asked after Alaina disappeared up the hidden stairwell. “If it’s easier for me to have nothing to do with you guys?”
“We’ll deal with that, too,” Trent assured him as he glanced toward the stairwell.
“I mean.” Vonner’s breath shuddered out and he shrugged. “Hell, you know, it’s too weird.”
“I know,” Trent agreed. “I struggled for years to figure out what the hell was real and what was just my imagination.”
Vonner nodded. “Yeah, you get it.”
“There’s something I don’t get,” Trent admitted. “How you survived getting shot, repeatedly, back at the barn. You jumped in front of those bullets. You took more than one.”
“Told you, bulletproof vest.” He thumped his chest, where a bullet-size hole had torn through the fabric of his suit jacket and the shirt beneath it.
“I was there when you got dressed,” Trent reminded him. “You aren’t wearing a bulletproof vest. What’s with you? Are you some kind of superhero?”
“Some kind,” Vonner said with a grin. “Like I told you, that old church was one strange place. The kids that spent a lot of time there … we’re a little bit different from everyone else.”
“Indestructible?” Trent asked.
Vonner shrugged. “Untouchable.” He chuckled. “Hell, I guess if I can accept that I can accept that you and Alaina are the reincarnated souls of my dead parents.” His breath shuddered out in a ragged sigh. “Now I gotta deal with their murderer.”
“I’d tell you to be careful,” Trent said, “but somehow I don’t think I need to worry about you.”
Alaina stood in the shower, washing off the dirt from the barn and her blood and the killer’s touch. She scrubbed her skin and shampooed her hair, trying to get rid of the past—at least the part of it that made her feel dirty.
Through the glass-block walls of the shower, she glimpsed a shadow. But no fear quickened her pulse. She felt only relief. And love.
Then Trent stepped under the water with her. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back against his chest.
“Will he be okay?” she asked, her heart aching as she thought of their son growing up alone in an orphanage, thinking his parents had left him there, forgotten him. Rejected him, just as her father had rejected her. She felt his pain as she remembered her own.
“Oh, yeah, he’ll be fine,” Trent assured her with a soft chuckle of admiration for the man he’d once suspected of being the killer.
She tilted her head back, trying to meet his gaze. “What about us?”
“He took our statements,” Trent said, misunderstanding her question, maybe deliberately. “Hell, Dietrich confessed all.”
“Like anyone will believe he was the killer from thirty years ago when he’s only twenty-nine.” At least her son believed, even if he struggled to accept, that they were the reincarnated souls of his parents.
“They’ve got the killer,” he reminded her. “They found his skeleton in the basement of the barn and the murder weapon, along with the chest of hearts that Dietrich found there.”
“Eli caught the killer,” she said. “His skeleton was there, too.” As was hers … in that uncovered hole in the cellar.
“Too bad he hadn’t brought him to justice instead of doling out his own,” Trent said with a heavy sigh of guilt. “Then his son wouldn
’t have had to grow up alone.”
“At least Vonner has their remains now,” she said, her breath catching with regret. “He can bury them and have some closure. And so can the families of those other victims.”
“And the new victims will have justice, too,” Trent said. “Dietrich’s DNA was found at the last two crime scenes. Vonner’s closed all the Thief of Hearts cases. Old and new.”
Pride filled Alaina. “Maybe he’ll get a promo tion.”
“The promotion and the credit should really be yours,” Trent said.
She shook her head. “No. I was stupid. I made so many mistakes.” In this life and her past one. “And everyone at the Bureau thinks I’m crazy now.”
“We can get you a lawyer to protest your firing. But you probably won’t get your job back,” he agreed, pressing his lips to her shoulder.
Goose bumps rose on her skin even though the water remained hot. “That’s okay. I think the only reason I really went into law enforcement was because I wanted to find out the truth. I wanted to know about this scar.” She pressed her fingers to the mark over her heart; now there was a fresh scratch over the faded scar.
Trent leaned over and replaced her fingers with his lips, kissing the sensitive skin. “I would have shot him …”
“But you’re not a killer,” she said.
“I was,” he admitted, and she felt his guilt.
She had her own.
“And I betrayed you,” she reminded him. “In that other life. Can you ever forgive me? Can you ever trust me?”
His breath shuddered out, warm against her skin. “I made so many mistakes, too. I didn’t pay you enough attention. I didn’t protect you. I was such a fool….”
“We were both fools,” she agreed, then voiced her greatest fear, one she knew he felt, too. “So can we forgive ourselves and start new?”
“We lived before,” he said, “but we’re not really those people anymore. Our souls are older and wiser now. We won’t make the same mistakes we did last time.”
“No, we won’t,” she promised. “We won’t lose each other again.” Alaina turned in his arms and linked hers around his neck. She pressed her naked body against his, wet skin sliding over wet skin.
His hands trembling slightly, Trent ran them up and down her back. Then he cupped her buttocks and lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, feeling his erection push against her. She reached between them, sliding her thumb over the pulsing tip of him before she guided him inside her. Emotions crashed over them as they made love with an explosive passion.
Trent thrust in and out of her and lowered his head, loving her breasts with his mouth, teasing the aching nipples with the tip of his tongue.
Pressure built inside Alaina, insistent and fierce. When she thought she could stand it no longer, an orgasm slammed through her, more intense than she’d ever felt, and she screamed his name. His hands tightened on her butt as he tensed and groaned. Then with one final thrust he came. Heat pulsed inside Alaina as he filled her.
Her legs, weak from desire and exhaustion, trembled as she regained her feet. He washed her again, quickly, then wrapped her in a towel and carried her to the bed, every gesture an expression of the love she felt in his touch and in his heart.
“What will you do,” he asked as he laid her onto the sheets, “if you’re not going to be able to work for the Bureau anymore?”
“Afraid I’m going to disrupt your writing?” she teased as she tugged him down beside her.
“I do have a book to finish,” he said with a sigh as he settled into the bed with her still wrapped in his arms, pressed tight against his heart. “But then the series is over after that.”
“Will you quit writing?” she asked, tilting her face to his.
“No,” he said, then grinned with an excitement that sparkled like the love in his green eyes. “I have an idea for a new series about a superhero FBI agent.”
“Will I be in your way if I stay up here?” Alaina wondered, remembering what Dietrich had claimed about how Trent wrote, how he wanted no interruptions.
Trent’s hand stroked along her side, as if he’d felt and wanted to soothe her doubts. “You would never be in my way. And no matter where we are, we will always be together,” he vowed. “As soon as we can get a license, I intend to make you my wife again.”
“From the moment I met you, I felt as though I already was,” she admitted. “I feel like I am your wife.”
“You are,” he said, and leaned forward to brush his mouth across hers, taking care of her swollen lip. “But I’d still like to make it official in this life.”
“Okay,” she agreed. “I can handle that.” And hopefully Vince could handle attending their wedding. She wanted him there.
As if he could read her mind as well as her emotions, Trent assured her, “He’ll come around. You’ll see. He won’t find it as hard to accept us as you fear.”
“I hope he can deal with it.”
“Will you be all right living here?” he asked. “We don’t have to stay, especially after—”
“You can’t be in the city around all those emotions. And I actually like it up here,” she admitted with a smile. “I think it’s going to be a great place to raise all the babies I want to have with you.”
“Really?”
“Sounds horribly old-fashioned, doesn’t it?” she realized with a laugh. “But I got cheated last time. I got robbed of being a mom. I want to do it right this time. I want to be a good wife and a good mother. I want to spend the rest of my life loving you.”
“I will love you for the rest of this life and the next,” Trent promised. “And the next and the next one after that …”
She pressed her mouth against his and murmured, “Forever …”
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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First published in Great Britain 2011
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Lisa Childs-Theeuwes 2011
ISBN: 978-1-408-92887-5
