by Jenna Mills
“You came,” she whispered against his chest. “You came.”
He pulled back and gently removed the blindfold from her eyes, the gag from her mouth. “Did you doubt that I would?”
Wordlessly she shook her head.
“Jesus, Danielle.” Raggedly he cut through the rope binding her wrists behind her back. “Do you have any idea what your note did to me?”
She swallowed hard, fought the emotion screaming through her. She’d planned everything so carefully. It had been imperative for Titan to think she was working alone. If she’d tried to tell Liam what was going on, Titan would have known, and Alex would have paid the price.
“I was there,” he said hoarsely. “At the beach, just like you wanted.”
“I felt you,” she whispered.
“I almost went out of my mind seeing you standing there, wanting to follow you. Seeing Titan’s men take you. Those men could have—”
“No, they couldn’t have,” she said. “Not with you there to cover my back.”
Sickly, she looked around the sterile white room where she’d been taken. A gleaming stainless steel counter held various medical instruments, syringes and needles, vials, several scalpels. A huge lamp hung over the stainless steel table where she’d been placed.
And on the floor, three men lay still and unmoving. Two were dressed in black, one wore a white lab coat. Near his lifeless hand lay an empty syringe. None of them were the man with the graying goatee who’d approached her in the hotel lobby.
Titan remained at large.
The horror of it all clogged her throat. “I wouldn’t have gone if I thought I was alone,” she whispered, returning her gaze to Liam.
Mouth tight, he went down on one knee to slash at the rope around her ankles.
If Derek had called, she would have known Liam wouldn’t be there to back her up, and she would have aborted her plan. “I would never have tried this without you.”
He looked up at her, his eyes dark and somber but no longer overrun by the shadows and secrets that had once followed him everywhere. “‘Those who walk alone are the first to fall.’”
Moisture flooded her eyes. “She was right,” Danielle whispered. “The fortune teller was right.”
Liam stood and lifted a hand to her face, swiped the tears from beneath her eyes. “You kill me, Danielle.”
She sensed the newcomer to the room before she heard him, felt him before she saw him. She was already spinning around when his voice, young and exuberant and incredibly brave, washed through her.
“Mom!”
She saw him then, Alex, her son, in her boss’s arms. Derek Mansfield lowered the child to the ground, and her little boy ran toward her. Barefoot.
She met him halfway. “Alex,” she breathed, drawing him into the circle of her arms. Feverishly she ran her hands along his small body, inventorying every inch of him, assuring herself he wasn’t hurt. Joy flooded her body, sang sweetly from her heart. And the tears flowed freely, unabashedly.
The risk had paid off. Her son was sa. “My sweet, big boy.”
“Tell me I’m not dreaming.”
Liam turned from the window overlooking Lake Michigan to find Danielle standing across the penthouse suite from him. Derek Mansfield had insisted she and her son stay in the Stirling’s finest room until their house was restored or they bought a new one. Liam had escorted them upstairs, waited in the antique living room while Danielle tended to Alex.
The man Liam had been for the past three years told him to leave. Walk out the door and make a clean break, slip into the night before the lines between them vanished altogether.
But then there was the man he’d always wanted to be. The man he’d vowed to become all those years ago, when he’d watched his mother clear the table of a meal his father had never come home to eat, when he’d smelled the alcohol and cheap perfume on his father’s clothes, when he’d stood outside his parents’ bedroom and listened to her tears. That man refused to let Liam take one step toward the door, not when the sight of Danielle and little Alex together filled him with a warmth he’d never known.
Silently he’d watched her kneel in front of the bathtub and bathe her son. He’d heard the soft lilt to her voice, the infectious laughter. Then, after she’d tucked Alex in bed, he’d stood there in the shadows, listening to their hushed voices as she told her son how much she loved him. As they prayed.
“…and for Mr. Liam,” Alex had said. “I think we should thank God for bringing Mr. Liam, too. He’s cool, isn’t he?”
Everything inside of Liam had gone still. Except his heart. It had slammed so hard he’d expected Danielle to twist around and catch him watching them.
“Yes, he is,” she’d told her son. “And we should definitely thank God for bringing him into our lives.”
Quietly Liam had turned and walked away.
Now he looked at her standing across the room from him. She’d showered, as well, changed into a pair of gold silk pajamas Mansfield’s wife had dropped by. They fell gracefully from the curves of her body.
Moonlight trickled in from the windows and played against her damp hair. Even from a distance her eyes looked shockingly green, like a field of grass on a bright spring morning.
No, she wasn’t dreaming, but he sure as hell was. Had been from the moment he’d first seen her.
It was time to say goodbye. His purpose for being in Danielle’s life was over. He’d gathered enough evidence at the abandoned warehouse turned makeshift medical facility to convince his field director that further investigation into Titan was warranted. He wouldn’t have to work alone anymore. He would have resources and backup, and he would not rest until he brought down the Titan Syndicate and made the man pay. Until then, he would make sure Danielle and her son were out of harm’s way.
“It’s over,” he said, his throat painfully dry. Because it was over. Everything.
Frowning, he glanced at the glistening bar in the far corner of the room, where Mansfield kept an impressive collecingle-malt scotch. But for the first time in years, he had no desire to run his hands along one of the bottles. No desire to touch or taste. Not the scotch, anyway.
Only Danielle.
The shadow crossed her eyes so quickly he couldn’t be sure he’d actually seen it. “I still don’t understand, though,” she said. “Why me? Why would the head of an international crime syndicate want me?”
The same reason any man would, Liam thought gruffly. But that was the man thinking, not the federal agent. Yes, any man would want Danielle Caldwell, but instinct warned that Titan’s interest stemmed from a far more sinister place than blind lust.
He’d hoped to get information from the men who’d taken Danielle, but whereas he’d shot to maim, one of Titan’s men had shot to kill, making sure no one was left alive to talk.
“One of Titan’s trademarks is to strike randomly and without pattern. He moves from country to country, continent to continent, targeting disparate individuals. We’ve yet to discern any logic to his MO.”
But he would, Liam added silently. If it was the last thing he did, he would crack the riddle behind Titan’s plan and find out why he’d targeted Danielle. An intriguing possibility had been gnawing at him for days.
There Could Be More, he remembered seeing splashed across a grocery store tabloid several years before, when rumors of genetically engineered humans had been rampant. The government had quickly stamped out the whisperings, but now Liam had to wonder. Why had Gretchen and Jake heard Alex’s cry in the dark? How was it that Violet had drawn pictures of him in captivity? Why did Gretchen and Danielle seem like they’d known each other forever? What had Titan hoped to gain by abducting Danielle and her son?
The questions defied logic, but the results of a simple blood test could provide the answers he needed.
“We’ve having the syringe analyzed,” he added, “but it looks like the contents were injected into one of Titan’s men before they were killed.” The sight of all those glistenin
g medical instruments still chilled his blood. “We found several other vials in the sink, but they were empty, too.”
Danielle let out a slow breath. “How do I know he won’t try again?”
“Because I won’t let him,” he said, and then he was doing what he’d told himself he wouldn’t do, couldn’t do. He was crossing to her, not stopping until he stood so close he could breathe in the clean scent of lavender soap and woman. Until he could feel the warmth radiating from her skin. Until he could touch.
But he didn’t.
“So help me God, that bastard is never going to hurt you or Alex again.”
Danielle lifted her eyes to his. “But you won’t always be here, will you, Liam? You said it yourself this morning. Now that Alex is back—”
He acted without thinking. He acted without caution. He put his hands to her face and lowered his mouth to hers, drank in the sweet taste of her, absorbed the reality of her.
“Don’t,” she whispered, twisting from his arms, and wn the moonlight swept over her face, the stricken look in her eyes gutted him. “Don’t.”
That was his cue to leave. To say goodbye and get on with his life. To continue his one-man crusade against Titan.
“I was wrong,” he said. “What I said to you this morning, about not wanting this.”
She frowned. “Liam—”
“Let me finish.” He glanced toward the window across the room, where the reflection of the moon rode the waves of the lake, proof that light could emerge even through the darkest of nights. “I didn’t think I could love again,” he said, turning back toward Danielle. “I didn’t think I wanted to love again.” Didn’t think he knew how. “But I was wrong.”
The words cost him. She knew Liam well enough to see the toll register deep in his eyes. That wasn’t all she saw, either. She hadn’t expected to find him standing by the window after she’d tucked Alex in bed. She’d expected him to be well on his way to his next mission.
She looked at him now, standing so still and resolute, reminding her painfully of a small boy confessing his sins. But it wasn’t the boy who stood before her. It was the man he’d become, the man who’d fallen and who’d hurt, but who’d picked himself up and dusted off the cobwebs, strode forward through life with purpose and compassion. The man who kept promises. The man who’d found a way to unlock that place deep inside her, the one she’d walled away two years before.
Silence stretched and pulsed between them. It filled the small moonlit room, drowning out all sound except the rapid-fire beating of her heart.
“Liam—”
“I can’t walk away,” he said, cutting her off, and then he was there, across the distance she’d put between them, taking her shoulders into his hands. The blast of heat was immediate. “Not when I can’t imagine wanting anything more than I want you and Alex in my life. Not just today and tomorrow,” he added. “But every day.”
She barely recognized the small, choked sound coming from her own throat.
“I love you,” he said, and suddenly his voice wasn’t tight anymore, but low and warm and drenched with an emotion she’d never heard from him. “I love you so much I could barely see straight when I realized you were setting yourself up as bait. If that bastard had hurt you—”
“He didn’t.” The ache in her chest, the one she’d been fighting, denying, turned unbearably sweet. “Because I was wrong, too.”
His eyes darkened. “Danielle—”
“I didn’t want you in my life, either,” she said. “I wanted to walk alone.” She’d thought that would be the safest path, the one of least resistance. “I told myself we made love last night out of mutual need, a need that would dry up the second I saw Alex again, safe and sound.”
“And then I would walk away,” he said quietly.
“Yes.” That was what she’d told herself. What she’d convinced herself she wanted. “Until I got that phone call earlier today, and Titan told me to show up at the beach alone.” The woman she’d been a few short days before would have followed the instructions to the letter.
But the woman she’d become, the woman who’d been touched by Liam, loved by Liam, no longer wanted to walk alone. That woman had crafted the plan to make Titan think she’d obeyed his command, while still making sure Liam would be there to cover her back. “I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I couldn’t ignore what Magdalena said.”
He lifted a hand to her face, fanned his fingers across her cheek. “And now?”
“Alex is safe.” Her voice broke on her words. “But the need is still there.” She pushed up on her toes and brushed a kiss across his lips. “Stronger than before.” More joyful, brimming with light, not darkness.
“God have mercy,” he muttered under his breath. Another kiss, this one deeper, longer, slower. “I’d forgotten.”
She drank in the feel and promise of his mouth, his body. “It sure didn’t seem that way to me,” she said with a wicked little smile.
He laughed. It was a bold sound, one she’d never heard from him, deep and rich and almost playful. “Not that,” he grumbled. “A man never forgets how to show a woman how much he loves her.”
Heat flooded her. She’d tried to write off the passion between them as simple, primal sex, basic and natural, but now she realized the truth. They’d been making love, even when they were trying to keep each other at arm’s length.
“Then what did you forget?” she asked with an equally playful smile.
A fierce glitter moved into his eyes. “What it’s like to feel alive,” he whispered roughly. “What it’s like to want to feel alive.” He pulled her against him, made it very clear that he was very alive. “What it’s like to love.”
His words flowed through her, as powerful and seductive as his touch and his kiss, his promise. She’d sensed all along that the aura of secrets and shadows that shrouded Liam concealed a passionate, honorable man, but she’d been scared to let herself believe. Let herself want.
There was no fear now, only a bone-deep belief and a soul-deep wanting, for this man, this love, the life she’d thought she could never have again but now knew that she could.
It was time to quit pretending. To quit denying the fierce longings of her heart. With Liam she could lean, but she knew he’d never let her fall. Just as she would never let him fall.
“Maybe we should get some practice in,” she whispered, trailing her fingers down his chest, freeing the buttons of his shirt along the way. “Just in case.”
“Good idea,” he growled, and then his mouth was on hers, and his arms were around her, and suddenly she no longer stood but was swept up in his arms and well on her way to the rest of her life. And the voice inside of her, the one she quit listening to all those years before, sang loudly.
Those who walked alone were the first to fall.
But those who walked together stood tall and unbreakable forever.
Epilogue
Laughter danced on the late-afternoon breeze.
Gretchen Miller put down the pitcher of lemonade and glanced beyond the wooden deck to the play area she and Kurt had assembled that spring. She stood very still, listening, watching, her heart swelling with a mother’s love.
Violet.
Alex.
She still couldn’t believe it. The little boy she’d first seen in astonishingly detailed drawings on her daughter’s art table was real. He wasn’t a figment of Violet’s imagination. Neither was his kidnapping.
“Fast friends, aren’t they?” her brother Jake commented.
Gretchen turned to him and smiled. “You’d think they’d known each other all their lives.”
“I’ve got a strange feeling about this,” one of her other brothers, Marcus, put in. His voice was ominous, his gaze dark. A highly trained, decorated Navy SEAL, he’d learned, as they all had, to trust his instincts.
Gretchen settled into one of the lawn chairs and picked up a glass of lemonade. “So do I.”
Jake scrubbed a hand over his face. “
That day we heard the cry…that was the day little Alex was taken, wasn’t it?”
“To the hour,” Gretchen said.
Marcus stood. “Has anyone talked to Faith recently? Does she know how much longer until the tests are back?”
Gretchen gazed over the heavily treed backyard, where the children worked on a massive fortress in the sandbox. Danielle and Special Agent Liam Brooks had flown in earlier in the day. The second Gretchen had seen them emerge from the secure area of Logan International Airport, the familiar hum had started once again, deep, deep inside. It was the same buzzing she’d felt upon meeting each of her new siblings.
“At least another week,” she said. Her sister, one of the finest medical scientists in the country, was running DNA tests to discover if the link they all felt toward Danielle extended beyond the psyche, to the blood.
“Triplets,” Jake mused.
The gravity of the coincidence, if it was one, staggered. “Just like all of us,” Gretchen murmured, wondering how it was possible.
“What about this leaf? Will it make a good flag?”
Alex Caldwell took the bright-green offering and speared it onto a twig. “Perfect.”
Violet sat back on her heels and studied the little boy. He looked different in the sunlight, more real. His face was fuller, his eyes brighter.
Alex looked up and caught her staring. “Whatcha lookin’ at?”
She chewed on her lip. “You,” she said. “I’m glad you got your Spidaman shoes.”
He glanced down at his feet and grinned. “Mom gave them to me just this morning.”
Happiness swelled through Violet. “I still can’t beweive you’re weal. I thought you were only a dweam.”
Alex reached for a pile of pebbles and lined them outside the moat. “Are you sure you weren’t there?” He pressed the largest stone into the sand. “I mean, how else could we have seen each other like that?”
Violet dropped a few daisy petals among the stones. “My mom thinks we might be welated.”
