by Lisa Childs
“Sharon Wells...” He repeated her name but it didn’t sound familiar even on his own lips. She wasn’t Doug’s or Terry’s wife; he knew their names, their faces, which he would never be able to look at again without a rush of guilt and shame. If Sharon Wells was a relative of one of them, she must’ve been a distant one, because he’d met most of their families, too.
He pushed up from the bed and stood on legs that were embarrassingly shaky until he locked his knees. He wasn’t staying overnight in the hospital, not when he had a killer to track down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know who you are.”
She sighed. “I hoped you would, that you might...”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because it would’ve made this easier if you were expecting me,” she replied.
Expecting her? He hadn’t been expecting anything else—not the bombs or the shootings to be meant for him. Why would he have expected her?
“Make what easier?” he asked.
Was she a hit woman? A hired assassin?
He glanced around for his holster and weapon, but they, like his clothes, were nowhere in sight. Neither was any of his family.
He’d thought they weren’t going to leave him alone...
“What I have to tell you,” she said. Then she drew in a deep breath, as if to brace herself, and continued, “That this is your son.”
He focused on the baby again. The little guy had fuzzy black hair and very bright blue eyes. The kid looked exactly like old baby pictures of him and Logan and Cooper. The baby certainly could have been a Payne. He could have been Parker’s...
Maybe he did need longer to recover from the concussion because standing was so much of a strain that his head grew light, and his knees gave out. His already banged-up body struck the floor. Hard. The last thing he heard, before oblivion claimed him, was her scream.
Chapter Two
She shouldn’t have screamed, but his falling was such a shock that it slipped out. And started a commotion. Ethan screamed, too—his was high-pitched and bloodcurdling as he reacted to her fear. And people rushed into the room.
These were the people she had passed in the hall, the people posted like guards outside his room. But given the police reports she had seen about the explosion and the previous attempts on his brothers’ lives, she understood the need for security. Yet they had all let her just walk past them. They had asked her no questions; they had only stared...at Ethan, their eyes round with shock.
They had immediately known what it had taken Parker much longer to realize—that she carried his son.
“What did you do to him?” one of his brothers angrily asked her as he crouched next to Parker on the floor. He looked so much like him that he could have been a twin. There were two men that good-looking in the world? It wasn’t fair.
Then a third one rushed forward to help lift Parker back onto the bed. Were they actually triplets? This man’s black hair was shorter—in a military brush cut, but other than that he looked so much like the other two it was uncanny. And Ethan looked like a miniature version of all of them. He must have been the spitting image of what they had looked like as babies.
Parker shrugged off his brothers’ helping hands and stood up again, steadily, as if his strength had already returned. And given the way his heavily muscled arms stretched the sleeves of his hospital gown, he was strong.
“I’m all right,” he assured his concerned family. “I just tried to get up too fast.”
An older woman tore her concerned gaze from Parker to stare at the baby. “Or was it the shock?” Her hand trembled slightly as she reached out for one of Ethan’s flailing chubby fists. When she touched him, he calmed down, his howls trailing away to soft hiccups. “Of finding out you’re a daddy?”
Parker shook his head then flinched at the motion. “Mom,” he exclaimed with shock and exasperation. “I am not a daddy.” He glanced at one of his brothers. “Is he yours?”
Of the group of people who’d rushed back into the room, a tawny-haired woman laughed while a blond-haired man snorted derisively.
Parker’s brother’s eyes widened in horror, and he glanced from Ethan to her. “I’ve never seen her before.”
“Neither have I.”
Sharon flinched. They had met a few times, albeit a while ago. How did he not remember her at all?
“You took one heck of a hit on the head,” his brother reminded him. “The doctor said you might have some memory loss because of the concussion.”
“Short-term memory loss,” Parker clarified. “That means I might forget what happened minutes or hours ago, not months ago.”
Sharon should have realized that a man like him wouldn’t remember a woman like her. She had spent her life trying to be quiet and unobtrusive, so there was no wonder that so few people ever noticed her.
But then the older woman glanced up at Sharon, her brown eyes full of warmth and wonder. Her hair was auburn, with no traces of gray, so she didn’t look old enough to have three thirtysomething-old sons, let alone a grandson. “How old is he?”
“Nine months.”
Ethan turned back to her and reached up his free hand toward her hair. Because he loved to pull it, she always bound it tightly and high on the top of her head. But a tendril must have slipped out of the knot because he found something to yank, the fine hairs tugging on her nape. She flinched again over the jolt of pain.
Mrs. Payne chuckled. “The boys always pulled my hair, too,” she said. “May I hold him?” She held out her arms as she asked, and the baby boy leaned toward her, almost falling into her embrace.
Panic flashed through Sharon at how easily he had been taken from her. That was what would happen when these people learned the truth. She would be cut out of Ethan’s life as though she had never been a part of it.
“Mom.” Parker drew the older woman’s attention briefly from the baby she held with such awe. “Can you bring him out into the hall?” He turned toward the others. “And the rest of you leave with her. I need to talk to Ms. Wells alone.”
Sharon’s panic increased, making her pulse race. She lifted her arms to reach for Ethan, to take him back, but the woman was already walking out the door with the sweet baby. And Parker grabbed her outstretched arms, holding her back, as all the others left.
She hadn’t really been alone with him before. She’d had Ethan. Even though he was a baby, he had been protection from Parker’s wrath. He had to be furious. And he had every right to be. His son had been kept from him, and someone was trying to kill him.
But he wasn’t the only one someone was trying to kill.
* * *
HOURS BEFORE, the explosion had knocked Parker on his ass, literally. Sharon Wells’s announcement, that the baby was his son, had knocked him on his ass, as well, although he would have rather blamed it on the concussion. But he’d recovered quickly.
Sharon was the one trembling now, as he held her arms. A diaper bag hung heavily from one of her thin shoulders, bumping against her side. She stepped back and jerked free of his grasp; apparently she was stronger than she looked.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” she said. “This was a mistake....”
“Trying to pass that kid off as mine?” he asked. “That was a mistake.”
And why had she done it? What had she hoped to gain? If she had been hoping to force someone to marry her, Cooper or Logan would have been the better bet; they cared more about honor than he did. But, damn his short-term memory, they were already married.
“He is yours,” she insisted. She held his gaze, her strange light brown eyes direct and sincere. “You can get a paternity test to prove it. Since we’re at the hospital, maybe they can rush the results.”
He dropped his hands from her arms and stepped back. “You’re serious....”
“It’s just a cheek swab,” she said. “It won’t hurt him or else I wouldn’t have suggested it.”
Because she loved her son...
Their son?
He scrutinized her face. The women he usually dated wore makeup and dressed in clothes that flattered their figures. But with her enormous, unusual eyes and delicate features, she didn’t really need makeup. She was actually quite beautiful. And his pulse quickened as attraction kicked in, tempting him to see just what her figure was like beneath her baggy suit.
Because of those eyes and that face and his sudden attraction to her, he knew he’d never met her before—much less been with her.
“There is no way that I am the father of your baby,” he insisted. “I would not have forgotten you if we’d ever been intimate.”
He wasn’t the careless playboy everyone thought he was. He didn’t have a slew of conquests whose faces he couldn’t remember.
Her gaze dropped from his, and her face flushed. “But—but you have a concussion....”
He shook his head, and pain from making the motion overwhelmed him. But he kept his legs under him this time and remained conscious. And finally the confusion from the concussion receded, leaving him angry.
“There is no way that your child is mine.”
“Take the paternity test,” she urged him. “Ethan is your son.”
Like everyone else, she must have believed that he was such a playboy that he wouldn’t remember every woman he’d ever slept with, but his reputation was grossly exaggerated and mostly undeserved. Even with the women with whom he was involved, he always used protection. He couldn’t have gotten anyone pregnant. So she had to be playing some angle with him, running some scheme.
Why? That paternity test she was urging him to get would only prove him right. So was she just buying some time? Was she just trying to distract him? What did she hope to gain? Did she want to collect the payout for his murder? From what Garek Kozminski had said, it sounded like a substantial amount.
Maybe he needed to search that diaper bag and make certain that she didn’t have a weapon concealed. Or maybe a bomb. He reached for the strap of the bag, but his hand grazed her breast instead.
Her already enormous eyes widened with shock.
She wasn’t the only one surprised. Her baggy suit hid some curves. Parker was as intrigued as he was suspicious of her.
“What—what are you doing?” she asked, her voice all breathy and anxious.
“You’re trying to convince me that I made a baby with you and the concussion made me forget.” No wonder she had taken the opportunity to show up now after hearing the news reports about his condition. “The effects of this concussion aren’t going to last,” he continued.
She nodded, either in agreement or because she was humoring him.
How far would she go to humor him? And to further whatever her agenda really was? He wanted to find out. “My memory can be jogged,” he told her.
“I—I still don’t understand,” she stammered.
“Jog my memory,” he challenged her, as he cupped her shoulders and pulled her closer.
Her eyes widened even more as she stared up at him. “Me? You want me to jog your memory?” she asked. “How?”
“Kiss me.” But he didn’t wait for her to take his bait; he reeled her in first. He tipped up her chin and lowered his mouth to hers.
Instead of jogging his memory, the kiss proved to him that he had never kissed her before—because it was all new. The silkiness of her lips, the warmth and sweetness of her breath as she gasped. He took advantage of that gasp to deepen the kiss, to slide his tongue inside her mouth.
His pulse raced and his head grew light again, but he didn’t blame the concussion for that reaction. He blamed her. Because now she was kissing him back, her tongue sliding over his, her lips pressing against his. If her goal was just to distract him, she was doing a damn good job.
He skimmed his hands up her face to that frustrating knot on top of her head. And he tugged her hair free so that it tumbled down around her shoulders. When he had first seen her, he must have still been half-blind from the concussion. Because there was no other explanation for how he hadn’t realized how beautiful she was....
She was every bit as beautiful—maybe even more beautiful—than any other woman he had ever dated. But he’d never dated her before.
It wasn’t just the first kiss with her—it felt bigger than that. More monumental. It was as if the earth was shaking beneath his feet.
Or at least the building. The structure rumbled, and the windows rattled. There were no earthquakes in Michigan—so it had to be another explosion.
Someone had set a bomb inside the hospital? Someone was so desperate to kill him that they were willing to risk the lives of more innocent people?
Of this woman? And her baby?
Smoke alarms blared, but the warning was too late. The bomb had already gone off. How many people had been hurt? And would more people be harmed trying to escape the hospital?
The commotion in the hall was so loud that it affected his throbbing head. Voices rose in fear and confusion. Footsteps pounded as if people stampeded in their panic. He glanced toward the window that had rattled. Flames reflected back from the glass. Was it too late to escape?
Or were they already trapped?
Chapter Three
The flames rose from the burning scraps of metal...of what used to be Sharon’s car. She remembered where she’d parked it—between the Mini Cooper that had rolled over from the force of the blast and the SUV that was already blackened from the heat of the explosion.
She gasped as she peered out the window around Parker’s broad shoulder. Her heart pounded erratically. Well, even more erratically than it had when he’d kissed her. She couldn’t think about that kiss right now.
She could think only about what could have happened to Ethan and her if they had been in that car. She pressed her hand over her mouth to hold back a scream of terror. The little boy was so smart and so sweet and affectionate. His life had barely begun; it could not be lost now.
She had already determined that she would do whatever was necessary to keep him safe. But bringing him here had been a mistake. She turned away from the window and headed toward the hall.
But Parker caught her arm, stopping her. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I need to find Ethan,” she said.
She needed to hold him, to make certain that the baby boy was all right. Loud noises terrified him; so did too many people, especially strangers. It was a miracle that he’d gone so willingly into Mrs. Payne’s arms, but that had been before the explosion and the chaos.
“I need to be with—”
“Here he is,” Mrs. Payne said as she walked back into the room with her grandson.
Just as Sharon had feared, he was crying. Tears streamed down his chubby cheeks. His screams must have escalated to hysteria because all he was doing now was gasping for shaky breaths.
She reached for him, and he nearly leaped into her arms, snuggling into her neck. His hands clutched her hair, pulling it around him. And she didn’t even care. Her eyes stung with tears at the thought of losing him. She loved this little boy so much; she couldn’t love him any more if he was actually hers.
* * *
“IT WAS HERS.” Logan confirmed what Parker had already suspected when he’d realized that the explosion had been a car in the parking lot blowing up.
At least it hadn’t been inside the hospital or close enough to the building to cause any structural damage. The windows had rattled and the floor had shaken, and the smoke from the parking lot had set off some of the alarms.
Logan added, “And the kid is yours.”
Stunned, Parker tensed and paused with his hand on his gun. That baby was h
is? But that made no sense. Unless...
Like a hostage at a bank holdup, Logan lifted his arms. “Don’t shoot me. I’m just the messenger.”
Parker slid his gun into the holster he had strapped under his arm. God, it felt good to be out of that hospital gown. And in a few minutes, he would be out of the hospital, too. After the explosion in the parking lot and all the media trying to get past security, he doubted that the doctor would protest his leaving early.
“The tests came back already?” he asked as he tried to slow the rapid beat of his heart.
It had been just as she’d said—just a simple cheek swab. From the baby. And him. And Logan and Cooper.
“Mom sweet-talked someone in the lab into rushing the results,” Logan replied.
Only a couple of hours had passed since the car exploded. The paternity test had been taken before the police arrived to talk to them. An officer had taken Sharon into a separate room, no doubt to question why and when someone would have put a bomb on her car. The police would have run the registration or vehicle number, if nothing had been left of the plate, to find out who owned it.
Parker had wanted to hear Sharon’s answers, too. But those weren’t the only answers he wanted from Sharon Wells.
“So who is she?” Logan asked.
“I have no idea,” he replied honestly.
Logan gestured around the hospital room. “It’s just you and me, Park. Tell me the truth.”
“I have no idea,” he repeated.
“So she was just a one-night stand?”
His temper rising, Parker grabbed the front of his twin’s shirt. “She’s not a one-night stand.” Not his, and he doubted, from the innocent way she dressed, that she was anyone else’s. He just wished he knew what exactly she was. A con artist? A killer? A kidnapper?
He hoped like hell she was none of those things. But he couldn’t let the sweetness of her kiss alleviate his suspicions about her.
“But you don’t even know who she is,” Logan pointed out.
