A real man, she thought yet again.
“Ana?”
“Yes?”
He didn’t look at her when he said quietly, “There isn’t a woman to take offense.”
“Oh.”
She wondered why he’d felt it necessary to explain that.
She wondered why she felt so gratified that he had.
She gave herself a mental shake; there was no time for such thoughts. She turned to look forward through the windshield again, to the east and the rising sun. The dawn of the first day without her baby in her arms.
She vowed it would also be the last.
Ryder was more than grateful for the plentiful hot water supply at the motel. He let it pour over his aching body. It seemed like a lifetime ago rather than just yesterday that he had stood here last. It had been routine, that last shower, not a matter of gingerly dodging the scrapes, sore spots, and developing bruises.
When he dried off and checked his chest and back in the mirror, the wounds weren’t as bad as he’d expected. There were going to be bruises all right, lots of them, but as he poked and prodded and took experimental deep breaths, he decided at the worst a rib or two might be cracked.
His face, on the other hand, was a lost cause. The left side was still swollen, and he had the beginnings of a brutal shiner to go with his split lip.
Looking like this, he’d have a hard time picking up a woman even in the worst roadhouse dive.
His lack of interest in every woman except for the one in the next room made him wince.
With a smothered sigh he turned away from the mirror. The last time he’d looked this bad was after he and Jorge Vega had crashed that motorcycle they’d taken for a joyride when he was thirteen. That had been the beginning of the end for Clay.
He felt a pang of sympathy for what he’d put his brother through; it couldn’t have been easy to try and keep their little family together when he’d only been eighteen himself. But Clay had done it. Ryder began to think about the enormity of that task. Clay had had to fight some government agency that didn’t think he was capable of handling a fourteen-year-old sister and a sixteen-year-old hellion of a brother. What kind of hard sell had his brother had to do to keep them all together?
And what good had it done? One ends up pregnant and dumped, the other in prison?
For one of the few times in his life, Ryder actually felt a pang of guilt. Clay had tried, more than most brothers would have, but Ryder hadn’t listened. He’d developed the knack of tuning out his brother as he’d tuned out teachers at school, letting his mind wander to the next bit of fun on the horizon.
He pulled on his last clean pair of jeans, thinking he’d have to take Mrs. Sanchez up on her offer of laundry services, and grabbed the T-shirt he’d brought in with him. Pulling it on made him wince, but he didn’t want Ana seeing his chest and back now that the bruises were rising to the surface.
He also didn’t want to be half naked in the same room with her. The last time he’d been hurting too much. Now, he was hurting a little less…
Barefoot, he opened the door into the main room. When he’d gone in for his shower, she had been seated at the small table by the one window, the notes they’d found spread out before her. But although the papers were still there, she was not.
A tiny sound alerted him, and he stepped into the room and looked in that direction.
She was curled up on the bed in a tight little ball, her body shaking, and he realized that she was crying.
Ryder felt as if Mr. E had just delivered a knockout punch. He couldn’t take this. Without faltering, she’d gone through a night of childbirth that would have left many men paralyzed.
“Ana,” he whispered, sitting down on the bed beside her.
“I can find nothing,” she gulped out between sobs. “There is all this talk in the notes about this person ‘Big,’ but there is nothing to tell us who or where he is. Nothing.”
He reached out, unable to stop himself from touching her.
“Don’t cry,” he said, knowing even as he uttered the words how ridiculously inadequate they were. Why shouldn’t she cry?
She lifted her head to look at him. Her eyes were reddened, her cheeks wet, and she was still beautiful.
“My baby,” she choked out. “My baby.”
Ryder saw with a sinking heart that it had hit her. That she had realized they were at a dead end, that they had no leads, no clues, nothing.
Driven by a need to comfort unlike anything he’d ever felt for a woman before, he lay down beside her and pulled her into his arms.
“We’re not giving up, Ana,” he whispered against her hair. “We’re not giving up.”
She shuddered, sobs taking her once again. He wished he had even the slightest idea how he was going to keep the promise he’d made to this woman, and to a tiny little girl who was likely already lost to them.
He held her as she wept, and she let him. That alone was a bit of a wonder, he thought. Ana Morales was strong and fierce and tough when she had to be, and even as big an idiot as he was when it came to women couldn’t miss the trust that implied.
Gradually she uncurled from her self-protective ball, and he could feel the soft, warm length of her pressed against him. If she’d been anyone else, if the circumstances had been any different, he would have made a move. He would like nothing more than to make love to this woman. He was good enough to make her forget her anguish, for a few moments at least, and perhaps allow her the peace of sleep for a few hours.
Again he told himself his self-control came because it was physically wrong for her that he wanted to make love rather than simply having sex. Also, the timing was wrong. Pressuring her at a time like this, with her full being focused on her daughter, would be one of the biggest mistakes of his life.
His worry about timing now—anytime had been the right time—was just another item on the growing list of things that were different with Ana.
But the reasons for it, whatever and however many there were, didn’t change the fact that it was the hardest damn thing he’d ever done.
“We’re not giving up, Ana,” he said for a third time. And as she wept he held her, forcing himself to think, not of how good she felt in his arms, of how much he wished things were different and he could indulge the need that was threatening to rage out of control, but of what the hell to do next.
Chapter 19
When she had awakened in his arms, Ana had been amazed, then embarrassed that she had slept. She was not sure he had, since he had been awake and looking at her when she had opened her eyes. The smile he had given her then, even lopsided thanks to his obviously still tender lip, had warmed her in the instant before reality had flooded back. She felt guilty for sleeping while her baby was missing.
“You needed to rest,” he’d said, accurately assessing her reaction. “And now we get back to it.”
She had not been at all sure what there was to get back to, but she’d been encouraged that he apparently had some sort of plan, so she had hastened to quickly shower while he went out to find coffee. As she had showered, she had become aware of the aching fullness of breasts used to nursing Maria every few hours.
She dug through the pink bag and brought out the manual breast pump that was in a side pocket. She had thanked Macy Ward—Yates now, she corrected herself—who had given it to her, but had also said she had no intention of being separated from her baby long enough to need it. Macy, who said she’d only gotten her sense of humor back since Fisher Yates had changed her life, had laughed and told her not to tempt fate with that kind of challenge.
She sent the tall brunette a silent apology for doubting her.
And chastised herself for tempting that fate to prove her wrong. Tears began anew as she went about the business of expressing the milk her baby should be having right now, and fierce worry at how Maria was being treated welled up inside her.
She had just finished when the door opened. She swiftly adjusted her bra and pulled her
sweater down before Ryder stepped into the room. He stopped just after closing the door, two steaming cups in his hand, looking at the device in her hand curiously. She explained, expecting him to become embarrassed at the very thought. As she was embarrassed by the thought that if he had been thirty seconds earlier, he would have walked in on her with her breasts bared.
But Ryder just looked at her, an odd, almost wistful expression on his face. A distant, unfocused sort of look, as if he were picturing something else.
Then, suddenly, he was back, holding out one of the steaming cups to her.
“We’re not giving up,” he said yet again.
“I know,” she said, eyeing the cup doubtfully.
“I got you hot chocolate,” he said. “The lady said that was better than coffee for you.”
Ana stared at him as she took the chocolate. Had the rakish, wild—and slightly battered-looking—Ryder actually asked some woman at a coffee shop what would be safe for a nursing mother to drink? Somehow that touched her as much as anything else he had done, and the tears threatened again.
She fought them down as she took the first sip, surprised at how good it felt, even knowing how hot it likely was outside.
While she drank, she watched Ryder gather up what appeared to be all his meager belongings. Or at least, all he had here in this motel room; she realized with a little shock that she did not even know where he really lived. She had trusted this man with the most important task of her life, and she did not even know if he lived in a house, an apartment, or a tiny room like this one in some other town.
“You are packing?” she asked as he stuffed things into a large canvas backpack.
“Don’t know when, or if, I’ll be back here. And some of it might come in handy.”
She brightened at the implications of that. “You have a plan?”
He grimaced. “Nothing so organized. Just the only thing I can think of to do.”
“Which is?”
“Shotgun,” he said.
Ana blinked, wondering if this meant something other than the weapon it seemed to refer to, if it were some American English slang term she’d somehow missed.
“You fire a shotgun,” he said, “the pellets spread out in all directions. You fire often enough, sometimes you get lucky and hit the right thing.”
She soon understood what he meant, literally. The next few hours were a whirlwind of action, Ryder tracking down every person he thought might have a connection to the baby ring. Ana noticed he took a different tack with different people, angry and intimidating with some, persuasive with others, going from sharp and frighteningly forceful to gently coaxing. Shaking them down, he called it. But so far the results had been negligible.
When they confronted some of the clients of the ring, couples so desperate for a baby they had asked no questions, even Ana felt the stirrings of an unwelcome sympathy.
Ryder had told her her job with those people was to represent Maria. To show them the truth of what they had done in their vehement insistence on getting a baby. That she could do easily enough.
As they proceeded, she had the thought that they worked well together. It was unexpected, as so much had been with this man, but undeniable as well. And she could not seem to stop herself from wondering what it would be like to have this man in her life, the kind of man who would not see her as a possession but a partner, who would be proud rather than annoyed at her intelligence, and who understood her determination to raise her baby in a better place.
She told herself her yearnings, her imaginings of a long, golden future with Ryder were just that, pure imagination.
It was hard to accept when the solid, strong reality of the man was right before her.
He left the number of Ana’s cell phone with each person they confronted. “You are hoping that they will have second thoughts or remember something after we leave? That they will call?” she asked when they’d made yet another stop. They were on the outskirts of San Antonio now, in a quiet residential neighborhood that seemed too peaceful and picturesque to harbor such evil doings.
“Or someone will,” Ryder said, almost absently as he negotiated the ramp onto Interstate-35.
Someone? Ana wondered. It took her a moment to realize he meant someone from the ring itself. That he thought one of the people they’d talked to—shaken down—would report to his bosses what had happened, that the man they had left for dead was not, and was now openly after them.
With his bruised face always before her, the risk Ryder was taking was never out of her mind. Yet she suddenly realized the danger he was putting himself in, that he was in fact asking for.
And yet he kept going. It was impossible to remain distraught in the face of Ryder’s tireless pursuit.
And unaccountably, despite the fact that nothing they’d done so far had seemed to get them any closer to finding Maria, her spirits rose.
He was getting toward the end of his list of people to arm-twist, badger, and if necessary bite, Ryder thought. And so far he’d accomplished nothing but to advertise himself, not just blowing his cover but incinerating it and putting up a billboard to mark the spot.
Getting Maria back was the priority now. The baby ring was secondary.
Which meant he’d likely signed and sealed the orders that would send him back to prison himself.
“What was the deal you made?”
Ryder nearly choked on his own breath. He shot her a sideways look. “What are you, a mind reader?”
She lowered her gaze. “I am sorry. I should not have asked. You are helping me, helping Maria, that should be enough.”
He fought the urge to reach out and take her hand. He hadn’t meant to snap, she’d just startled him, so close was her question to what had just gone through his mind.
The idea that simply touching her hand, holding it, seemed like the thing he wanted most unsettled him anew. What the hell was happening to him? How had he gotten to the point where a mere look, a brush of skin, was enough, when it was from this woman? And why couldn’t he seem to find the fortitude to back the hell off?
Maybe you can’t, but I’ll bet she can, he told himself.
“The deal I made,” he said, his voice flat, “was to get out of prison. Happy now?”
If she was shocked, it didn’t show. “Why were you in prison?”
She was so calm he would have thought she hadn’t heard him right if she hadn’t repeated the word back to him.
“It was the culmination of a misspent life,” he said.
“In America, are not charges usually more…specific?”
What was with this woman? Why wasn’t she cringing away from him instead of discussing this as if it were the weather?
“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t do what they put me in for—at least, not knowingly—but I’ve done enough to end up there anyway.”
“Tell me,” she said.
Right, he thought.
But he did. Somehow, in his efforts to avoid it, he ended up spilling it all, things he’d never talked about with anyone except Boots. Like some lovesick kid, he poured out his entire pitiful history to her. And she listened. Not that she had much choice, stuck here in the truck’s cab with him, but she could have told him to shut up. And when he finally finished, he fervently wished that she had.
He waited, certain she sadly regretted that “Tell me,” now. His life no doubt seemed a cakewalk compared to what she’d been through, and she probably thought him a whiner. He wasn’t sure she wasn’t right. He—
“Odd, is it not? That while my family was large and close, they were of no more good to me than yours to you.”
Of all the things she could have said, nothing could have startled him more. “You mean I was no good to them.”
“No. They obviously did not understand what you needed, just as mine did not understand—or care about—my needs.”
“My brother tried,” Ryder said, stirred to an uncharacteristic defense. “We just…always fought.”
; “I have two older brothers. They are very close. I believe they would die for each other. But they care little for the rest of the family.”
“I guess we were just too different, my brother and I,” Ryder said, wondering where that piece of understanding had floated up from. “We could barely stand each other. Maybe even hated each other.”
She shook her head. “I doubt it is truly that way.” When she went on, her tone was different, almost speculative. “The man who owns the ranch, Jewel’s friend Clay, he also had a brother he always fought with. But when he learned that brother had died, he was devastated, as any brother would be. He is still fiercely grieving.”
Ryder went ice cold. The oddity of suppressing a shiver in the August heat didn’t even register.
“Died? Clay thinks…his brother died?”
“Yes. Seven months ago. Jewel told me.”
When he got out for this assignment. That must be part of the cover. A part they hadn’t told him about.
But he hadn’t told anyone, except Boots, that he even had a brother. No one at the prison knew, nor did his new employers.
“How did he find out?” He couldn’t help the hoarseness of his voice, but Ana answered as if he’d asked a simple, normal question.
“He wrote to his brother, to try and make amends. It came back. He wrote again. The same thing happened. He called, and was given—Jewel called it the runaround?—so he went to see him in person.”
Ryder swallowed tightly. “He went…to see him?”
“That is when he was told. He is still grieving deeply, and cannot forgive himself for waiting too long.”
Ryder swallowed tightly. Emotions too deep and old to name swirled around inside him. But finally, belatedly, something occurred to him; there had been a very pointed note in Ana’s voice as she’d told him this story. And then there were the details. More than seemed natural for the situation from her point of view.
Baby’s Watch Page 15
