One Night Standoff

by Delores Fossen

  THERE WAS NO WAY SHE COULD HIDE THE BUMP…

  Lenora Whitaker never thought spending one night with U.S. marshal Clayton Caldwell would put them in the crosshairs of a killer. Connected to a protective custody case gone awry, they are both attacked, leaving Clayton with a damaging case of amnesia and forcing Lenora to go on the run.

  After taking a bullet to save her life, Clayton is unable to remember Lenora or that he’s the father of her baby. But the moment he tracks her down, it’s clear the attraction is still there. Hiding out together on his Texas ranch, Clayton admires the way Lenora will do anything to protect her unborn baby. Connecting with the pregnant beauty also triggers the first hints of his past. A past that could mend their broken lives—or unearth secrets he’d be better off forgetting.

  “This might help me remember.” His warm breath hit against her lips when he spoke.

  And suddenly more than anything, Lenora wanted him to remember. Oh, and she wanted him to kiss her, too. Clayton might not have any memories of their one-night stand, but Lenora was well aware that he could set fires with his mouth.

  He moved in closer. Closer. And she was just a breath away from kissing him again. Too bad she could already feel it and also too bad her body seemed to think this was foreplay, that Clayton would haul her off to bed again.

  That wouldn’t happen.

  Even if she desperately wanted it.

  Her eyelids were already fluttering down, getting ready for that kiss, when Clayton stopped. It took her a moment to realize why. The baby was kicking, and with her body pressed against Clayton’s, he could feel it.

  USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  Delores Fossen

  ONE NIGHT

  STANDOFF

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Imagine a family tree that includes Texas cowboys, Choctaw and Cherokee Indians, a Louisiana pirate and a Scottish rebel who battled side by side with William Wallace. With ancestors like that, it’s easy to understand why USA TODAY bestselling author and former air force captain Delores Fossen feels as if she were genetically predisposed to writing romances. Along the way to fulfilling her DNA destiny, Delores married an air force top gun who just happens to be of Viking descent. With all those romantic bases covered, she doesn’t have to look too far for inspiration.

  Books by Delores Fossen

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  1026—THE CHRISTMAS CLUE*

  1044—NEWBORN CONSPIRACY*

  1050—THE HORSEMAN’S SON*

  1075—QUESTIONING THE HEIRESS

  1091—SECURITY BLANKET**

  1110—BRANDED BY THE SHERIFF†

  1116—EXPECTING TROUBLE†

  1122—SECRET DELIVERY†

  1144—SHE’S POSITIVE

  1163—CHRISTMAS GUARDIAN**

  1186—SHOTGUN SHERIFF

  1205—THE BABY’S GUARDIAN***

  1211—DADDY DEVASTATING***

  1217—THE MOMMY MYSTERY***

  1242—SAVIOR IN THE SADDLE‡‡

  1248—WILD STALLION‡‡

  1252—THE TEXAS LAWMAN’S LAST STAND‡‡

  1269—GI COWBOY

  1314—GRAYSON††

  1319—DADE††

  1324—NATE††

  1360—KADE††

  1365—GAGE††

  1371—MASON††

  1389—CHRISTMAS RESCUE AT MUSTANG RIDGE

  1395—STANDOFF AT MUSTANG RIDGE

  1419—THE MARSHAL’S HOSTAGE‡

  1425—ONE NIGHT STANDOFF‡

  *Five-Alarm Babies

  **Texas Paternity

  †Texas Paternity: Boots and Booties

  ***Texas Maternity: Hostages

  ‡‡Texas Maternity: Labor and Delivery

  ††The Lawmen of Silver Creek Ranch

  ‡The Marshals of Maverick County

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Marshal Clayton Caldwell—He must rely on broken memories and a mysterious woman, Lenora, to stay alive and outsmart a hired gun. Even though he’ll protect her with his life, he’s not sure he can trust her with his heart.

  Lenora Whitaker—After a one-night stand with Clayton, Lenora realizes she’s pregnant. However, her secret past is catching up with her, and it puts Clayton, their baby and her in the crosshairs of a killer.

  Kirby Granger—Clayton’s foster father who’s under investigation for an old murder.

  Adam Riggs—He’s in jail awaiting trial for killing Lenora’s friend, but he could have hired assassins to take out Clayton and Lenora so they can’t testify against him.

  James Britt—A Justice Department agent investigating the attempts to kill Lenora and Clayton, but he could have his own agenda.

  Quentin Hewitt—Lenora’s former boss and a man she once thought she loved. He could have strong objections to Lenora’s involvement with Clayton.

  Melvin Larson—Clayton’s biological father. He abandoned Clayton years ago but now he’s back.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  Marshal Clayton Caldwell figured this could be bad.

  He waited at the window and watched the woman exit the dark blue car that she’d just parked next to the Marshals Service building where he worked. She glanced around, but because of the other vehicles, there was no way she could have seen the black truck that eased to a stop about a half block up the street.

  Clayton saw it, all right.

  And he didn’t like the looks of this.

  Had the driver of the truck followed her?

  And if so, why?

  Since Clayton had been at the second-floor window finishing his morning coffee and watching for his visitor to arrive, he’d been able to see the car and truck. Both unfamiliar. Not that he knew every vehicle in Maverick Springs, but the truck’s front license plate was obscured with mud or something. That, and the fact that the driver didn’t get out, made Clayton very uneasy.

  Or maybe that was just a reaction to Lenora Whitaker’s visit.

  Until the night before, he hadn’t heard from her since—well, just since. After nearly two months, Clayton had figured it’d stay that way.

  “Everything okay?” Harlan McKinney asked. His fellow marshal and foster brother was seated in the corner of the desk-clogged room. Harlan’s attention was on some reports, but judging from his concerned look, he’d given Clayton a glance or two.

  That’s when Clayton realized he’d slipped his hand over the Glock in his leather waist holster.

  Old habits.

  Sometimes he wished he could turn off this blasted LEO—law enforcement officer—alarm in his head, but he’d been a marshal for nearly a decade now. Too long to turn off alarms. Or to get a decent night’s sleep, for that matter.

  “I’m not sure if everything’s okay,” Clayton answered. “I got a bad feeling about this.”

  And that sent Harlan from his desk and to the window, where he looked out, as well.

  Clayton waited, watching the wipers on the truck slash away the rain from the windshield. Not a gentle April shower. More like a downpour. But it wasn’t long before he heard the footsteps on the stairs. Not just ordinary footsteps, though.

  Heels.

  They really st
ood out in the building where all six of the marshals were male. There were female employees in the other parts of the building, but this time of day they rarely came to the second floor.

  The woman stepped into the doorway of the squad room, her attention zooming right to Clayton.

  Lenora.

  Yeah, it was her, all right. She stood there, her damp shoulder-length brown hair clinging to the sides of her face. The water dripped from her raincoat and the umbrella she had clutched in her hand and splattered onto the floor.

  “Clayton,” she said on a rise of breath.

  Her gaze darted to Harlan, and she cleared her throat. Maybe because Harlan was just plain intimidating, with his linebacker-size body and hard lawman’s eyes. Thankfully, Clayton’s foster brother went back to his desk in the corner and pretended not to notice they were in the room.

  “Marshal Caldwell,” Lenora corrected herself.

  That surprised him. Women he’d had sex with didn’t usually get so formal after the fact. Of course, Lenora and he had only been together for that one night—and at one of the worst times in her life, to boot—but still she had to remember it.

  He certainly did.

  Despite being all mussed and wet, Lenora was a darn attractive woman. And judging from her dark green eyes, a troubled one.

  “There’ve been no updates on the investigation,” Clayton volunteered to test her reaction. Was that why she’d asked to see him?

  Clayton glanced at Harlan, who was glancing at them and no doubt wondering what the heck was going on.

  So was Clayton.

  Lenora had been cryptic when she’d called the day before, saying only that she needed to catch up with him.

  “No updates,” she repeated. “Yes.” And that was all she said for several seconds, before she cleared her throat again. “Marshal Walker called a few weeks ago to say there’d been no progress.”

  Marshal Walker, as in Dallas Walker, another of Clayton’s foster brothers. Dallas was indeed in charge of the investigation into the murder of Lenora’s best friend. A murder that’d happened nearly two months ago.

  The last time Clayton had seen Lenora.

  And they hadn’t exactly parted under good circumstances. In fact, Lenora had sneaked out of the hotel room while Clayton was in the shower, and she’d left him a note saying it’d been a big mistake for them to have sex.

  Since that wasn’t exactly a good memory, Clayton pushed it aside and hitched his thumb toward the window. “Did someone in a black pickup follow you here?”

  Lenora’s eyes widened, and she practically ran across the room to look out.

  No truck.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. “It was there a few seconds ago. Guess I was wrong about it.” Funny, though, his LEO alarm was usually a hundred percent.

  Lenora was breathing through her mouth now, and her eyes were still wide. Her gaze darted around the parking lot and street. “You thought I was being followed?”

  “Were you?”

  “Maybe.” Her bottom lip trembled. “I’d hoped it was my imagination. I’m not sleeping well, and the nightmares are getting worse.”

  Yeah. He knew all about those nightmares. A woman, Jill Lang, was dead. Gunned down right in front of both of them. She’d been Lenora’s best friend. And a witness in Clayton’s protective custody.

  He didn’t expect the nightmares to end anytime soon.

  Clayton could practically feel Lenora’s worry, and even though she’d given him the brush-off two months ago, he reached out and touched her arm. Well, the sleeve of her wet raincoat, anyway. He hoped it was a sympathetic gesture without getting too close.

  “Jill’s killer was caught,” Clayton reminded her. And even though the man had yet to go to trial, he would be convicted of murder. No doubt about that, since there was a mountain of evidence against him, including Clayton’s and Lenora’s own eyewitness accounts.

  But maybe this wasn’t about Jill’s killer.

  “I know about the break-ins at your house in Eagle Pass,” Clayton told her.

  Lenora pulled her shoulders back, and she shook her head. “How? Why?”

  Both good questions. He didn’t exactly have good answers, though, and it sounded a little creepy to admit that he’d kept tabs on her. But he had. Too bad Clayton didn’t know exactly why he’d done it. He’d had short-term relationships before that he’d dismissed without a second thought.

  So why hadn’t he been able to do that with Lenora?

  Because there was something that wasn’t quite right about this. Something he couldn’t put his finger on.

  She pushed her hair from her face and glanced at Harlan again. “Could we go somewhere private and talk?” she asked Clayton.

  Maybe Harlan was making her nervous. He had that effect on people. But from Clayton’s assessment, Lenora had been nervous before she even came into the room.

  Clayton set his coffee on his desk and grabbed his jacket. “There’s a diner across the street,” he said, already walking toward the door. “Call me if something comes up,” he added to Harlan.

  “Tell me about these break-ins,” Clayton insisted as soon as they were out of the office.

  Lenora gave a weary sigh. “The first one happened last week—as I’m sure you read in the report. I wasn’t there, but the person destroyed an antique panel that I’d been restoring.”

  Property damage. Much better than damaging her body, but he could tell from her tone that it still hurt. Clayton didn’t know a lot about Lenora’s job in stained-glass restoration, but he remembered her saying that she often worked with expensive antiques.

  “What about the second break-in?” He stopped just outside the building and looked around. Lenora did, too. There was no sign of that black truck, so he took her by arm and led her across the street.

  “You already know.” She sounded upset, or something, that he’d read the police reports, but Clayton didn’t intend to apologize for that.

  “I still consider you my business,” he clarified.

  She blinked. “Why? Because my friend was killed on your watch? If so, that wasn’t your fault.”

  The question threw him. Yeah, that was part of it—that a woman in his protective custody had died. In fact, that should have been all of it. But there were feelings buried beneath this, and maybe Lenora’s blink meant it wasn’t all business for her, either.

  She looked away, mumbled something he didn’t catch. “Back to the break-ins. Again, I wasn’t there for the second one. In fact, I’ve been living at one of those extended-stay hotels since the first break-in.” Lenora paused. “The intruder left threatening messages scrawled on my bedroom wall.”

  Clayton cursed. That hadn’t been in the initial report he’d read from the Eagle Pass P.D., but Clayton knew this was an escalation. If Lenora had been there—

  But he cut off that bad thought.

  Maybe their one-night stand had made her want to keep some distance between them. But she was here now, and though she hadn’t said it specifically, she appeared to be asking for his help.

  Which she would get.

  And Clayton assured himself that it had nothing to do with the night he’d spent with her. Or this cool heat still simmering between them. He would have helped anyone who needed it.

  They took a booth by the window so he could keep watch for the truck, and he asked the waitress to bring them two cups of coffee.

  “Do the cops have a suspect in the break-ins?” he asked.

  Lenora shook her head. “They don’t have any prints, any type of trace evidence, and none of my neighbors saw anyone suspicious.”

  That meshed with the reports he’d read, but witnesses often came forward later. Maybe that would happen in this case.

  “Tell me who you think was in that truck,” Clayton said.

  Another head shake. “I don’t know.”

  “A boyfriend, maybe?”

  “No. I’m not seeing anyone. And I don’t think I’ve been followed before.”
Lenora blew out another breath, and she had a death grip on the coffee cup. “There’s more.” She said it so softly that Clayton didn’t actually hear her. He saw the words form on her lips.

  “What?” he pushed when she didn’t explain.

  This was beyond a bad feeling, and he instantly went back to the night they’d spent together. He wasn’t sure he was ready to deal with what she was about to say, but he also knew he had to hear it.

  “You’re pregnant?” he came out and asked.

  No blink this time. She nodded.

  And that nod sent his heartbeat racing out of control.

  Oh, man.

  It felt as if someone had punched him in the gut. All the air left his lungs. All. But he fought to get enough breath so he could speak.

  However, Lenora beat him to it. “I wrestled with whether to tell you at all. I mean, we hardly know each other. But I decided if our situations were reversed, I’d want to know. By the way, I don’t expect anything from you,” she added.

  That gave him a jolt of breath he needed. “Well, you damn well should expect something.”

  Lenora eased back, her attention fixed to him. “Obviously, you’re not pleased about this—”

  “Only because I didn’t see it coming.”

  “Yes.” And she repeated that. “It caught me off guard, too. We used protection, but something must have gone wrong.”

  Obviously.

  He pulled in a couple of quick breaths and hoped it’d clear his head. He needed to think. To say the right thing.

  Whatever that was.

  A baby!

  He’d never planned on being a father. Never. And this was a shock that made him speechless.

  She looked up. Their gazes connected. But then Lenora looked away again. Not at the coffee this time, but rather out the window.

  “Is that the black truck you saw?” Her attention was on something over his shoulder.

  Clayton turned in that direction and saw the truck. Yeah. It was the same one. It was creeping along Main Street, going past the diner.

  Unlike before, the window on the passenger’s side was halfway down. There didn’t appear to be anyone seated there, only the person behind the steering wheel. Clayton couldn’t see the guy’s face.

  But he saw the gun.