by Lisa Childs
He would never forgive himself if something happened to the baby because he’d let himself get distracted—because he hadn’t been paying close enough attention. And he was pretty damn certain that the baby’s mother would never forgive him either.
* * *
She would never forgive him for making her fall for him. And she knew she was falling when she watched him once again pick Connor out of his crib and cradle him against his muscular chest. He cuddled her son as if he was the baby’s father rather than just his protector.
That was the only reason he was here—to protect them. She had to remind herself of that. But the reminder didn’t ease her attraction to him, didn’t cool the desire she felt for him, the desire that had kept her from falling back to sleep after she’d left the nursery.
Forrest patted Connor’s little bottom. “He’s dry,” he said. “Why’s he crying? Is he hungry?”
She shook her head. “I fed him after you left to make your call.” And that had been just a little over an hour ago. Even Connor couldn’t be hungry again so soon.
Forrest tensed. “Did you overhear any of that?”
She shook her head. She’d been focused on her son and had also been reluctant to eavesdrop. “Let me take him,” she said as she reached out for the baby. Maybe she hadn’t burped him well enough before she’d put him back down to sleep.
Forrest had moved his hand from the baby’s diapered bottom to his back, and as he patted, Connor spit up all over the front of Forrest’s checkered shirt. The detective’s hazel eyes widened with shock and horror.
“That’s why I wanted him,” she said. She hadn’t wanted her son to spit up on his protector. “I was afraid that might happen.”
Forrest arched a brow over one of his eyes. “You sure you didn’t put him up to it?”
Since he’d turned down her invitation to dance, she hadn’t been very friendly to him, and her face flushed with embarrassment that he’d stung her pride so much.
“Of course not,” she said, but her lips curved into a slight smile. “He’s too young to be trained to do stuff like that.” Weariness tugged her lips back down. “And if I could train him to do anything, it would be to sleep through the night.”
“Don’t you know your mama needs her beauty rest?” Forrest asked the baby as he jostled him in his arms.
“Don’t—” Rae began. But it was already too late.
The baby threw up even more on Forrest’s shirt.
“How much did you feed him?” Forrest asked.
She sighed. “Apparently too much.” His bout of colic wasn’t helping his digestion any either.
But throwing up must have because his lids began to droop over his big brown eyes, and he nodded back to sleep. She stepped closer and lifted him away from Forrest’s chest. “I’ll put him down. You can go change your shirt.”
“I didn’t bring anything to change into,” he said. “I didn’t realize I was going to wind up staying.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said.
“You wouldn’t go to a hotel or your friend’s house, so yes, I had to,” he said.
He could have left her and Connor alone, to fend for themselves, if the intruder had returned, but he had refused to do that. He was a good man.
After cleaning up a sleeping Connor and settling him back into his crib, she turned toward Forrest, and a gasp slipped through her lips as she discovered that he’d taken off his soiled shirt.
He was a sexy man, too.
So damn sexy...with his heavily muscled chest that was lightly dusted with golden-brown hair.
Her mouth watered, forcing her to swallow down the desire that nearly choked her. She couldn’t remember ever wanting anyone the way she wanted Forrest Colton. What the hell was wrong with her? Was it the lack of sleep? Her fear over the threats?
Or just hormones?
With the shirt dangling from one of his fingers, he asked, “Where’s your washing machine?”
Leaving Connor asleep in his crib, she walked on suddenly trembling legs toward the doorway Forrest’s big, half-naked body filled. She swallowed again and cleared her throat before replying, “I’ll wash it for you.” But when she reached for the shirt, he held tightly to it.
“I can do it,” he said. “You should go back to sleep.”
She doubted that she would be able to sleep now, since she hadn’t been able to earlier. Having him in her house had some strange restlessness coursing through her, making her hot and achy in places where she hadn’t been hot and achy in a damn long time...if ever.
“Fortunately I function well on small amounts of sleep,” she said as she tugged again on the shirt.
“You don’t have to,” he said.
She smiled. “Just like you didn’t have to stay here.”
Or change Connor’s diaper, or try to comfort him when he was crying...
Damn Forrest Colton. He was definitely making her fall for him. And she knew better than that; she knew he wasn’t sticking around Whisperwood. His assignment here was only temporary.
“I have to,” he said. “And when I called the chief, he refused to put anyone else on protection duty for you and Connor.”
She tensed. “He doesn’t think I’m in danger?”
“He doesn’t have the resources,” Forrest said. “That’s how I got tapped to investigate these cases. Because of Hurricane Brooke, Whisperwood PD is just spread too thin right now.”
“And murder investigations would take precedence over the note left on my pillow,” she said with a sigh. “You should be working on those cases and not babysitting me and my son.”
“I promised I would make sure you and Connor stay safe,” he said, and his deep hazel eyes filled with intensity as he stared down at her. “And I keep my promises.”
She smiled but shook her head. “You won’t if you make promises that you can’t keep.”
“But I—”
She pressed her fingers across his lips before he could finish his protest. “You can’t be with us 24/7. You have a job. A life. And so do I. I need to go to work and to my law-school classes.”
His lips moved beneath her fingers. “But the threat—”
“Isn’t going to stop me from living my life,” she said.
“That’s exactly what might happen,” he pointed out. “If you’re not careful.”
She smiled again. “I am always very careful.” That was why she had used a sperm donor to have a baby—because she was too careful to trust a man to stick around for her and most especially for her child. She didn’t want her son to be as disappointed as she had been so often.
“You’re not being very careful right now,” he murmured, and using their hands on his shirt, he tugged her close, so close that she pressed against his bare chest.
And her breath caught as desire overwhelmed her. His skin was so hot, his body so hard. “Forrest...”
He was right—damn it—because she wasn’t being careful. And she was probably going to wind up hurt and disappointed, but she figured she might be even more disappointed if she didn’t act on her desire for him.
She would deal with the fallout later.
She dropped his shirt and eased her hands between them, sliding her palms over his bare chest. Soft brown hair covered well-developed muscles that rippled beneath her touch.
He groaned and stumbled back when she pushed him. Then he shook his head and, breathing hard, murmured, “I’m sorry.”
She wasn’t. Yet.
She pushed him again, out of the nursery, and he stumbled back another step.
“I’ll leave you alone,” he promised.
“That’s not what I want,” she said.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“You.”
Instead of pushing him, she pulled him now, tugging him toward her bedroo
m. But he didn’t budge, his big body frozen with tension that radiated off him and to her. It gripped her, spiraling inside her with such intensity that she knew she needed to release it. If she didn’t, she might explode into a million pieces.
“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice gruff with passion and something else.
Something like vulnerability.
Clearly Bellamy and Maggie had been right; his fiancée had done a number on him when she’d taken off like she had—the same number Rae’s deadbeat dad had done on her.
“I’m sure,” she said, and to convince him, she rose on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.
His arms closed around her, holding her against him as he kissed her back. But then he pulled away and murmured, “This is a mistake.”
And she tensed. “I’m sorry.” Tears stung her eyes; this time his rejection hurt more than just her pride. “I need to stop throwing myself at you.”
He chuckled, a deep chuckle that rumbled in his naked chest. “You’re not throwing yourself.” His chuckle turned to a groan. “But even if you had, I would catch you and not let you go.” His arms tightened around her.
She pulled back, staring up at his handsome face. His jaw was so tightly clenched, a muscle pulsated in his cheek. “I thought it was a mistake.”
“It is,” he said. “I need to stay focused on protecting you. But I want to do so much more.”
Her breath escaped in a gasp of relief. He wasn’t rejecting her. “We’re safe,” she said. “Nobody has tried to get inside.” And she doubted that they would with his police vehicle parked outside. “Nobody’s out there.”
“I hope you’re right,” he said, and he lowered his head and kissed her again.
* * *
He was out there—watching the shadows behind the curtains, watching as they moved together toward that front bedroom.
She hadn’t heeded his threat. Hell, it wasn’t his threat. It was the threat of a killer—a killer who wanted this detective off the murder cases so badly that he would do anything.
Even kill again.
The baby? Or him?
If he didn’t get the detective to back off, would he, despite trying to get rid of the lawman, be the next victim? It was a chance he couldn’t take—even if he wound up becoming a killer himself.
Chapter 11
The law office of Lukas, Jolley and Fitzsimmons wasn’t far from the Whisperwood Police Department. Forrest wanted to continue driving past the brick building without letting out Rae or Connor, but she reached across the console of her SUV and gripped his knee.
His entire body reacted just as it had last night. Tension filled him, and his erection throbbed behind the fly of his wrinkled dress pants.
“This is it,” she said. “Where I work.”
“You shouldn’t be going to work,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”
But it would have been more dangerous had they stayed inside her house together because they would have given in to the attraction between them, just as they had the night before. Or had that really happened?
Or had he only dreamed it?
He had been so exhausted that he might have nodded off at the table and only imagined they’d made love. But he hadn’t awakened at the table; he’d awakened in her bed, with her naked body clasped in his arms, and her head nestled between his neck and shoulder.
How had he been so irresponsible? So reckless? The intruder could have returned when they’d been making love or when they’d fallen asleep.
Forrest had rushed out of bed then to check on Connor, to make sure nothing had happened to him. The baby had been fine. But Forrest was not.
He would never be fine again. What had happened between them...
Rae tightened her grip on his thigh. “Forrest, please.”
She’d said that last night, when he’d kissed his way from her lips down her entire body. She’d begged for more. But she hadn’t been the only one.
He had worried that he might not survive the onslaught of emotion when she’d returned his favor and kissed him all over, including the scars on his wounded leg. Shannon had been so horrified of his injury that she’d run away. But Rae...
Rae was different. She’d stuck around after her father had taken off and had cared for her sick mother. Rae was caring and compassionate.
And passionate and...
“Forrest,” she said again.
With a sigh of resignation, he turned around in a parking lot a block past the law building and headed back to her work. Finally she moved her hand from his leg, and he sighed again, but with regret. Despite the tension it caused, he wanted her touching him—like she’d touched him last night.
But she’d turned around to peer into the back seat, where the baby carrier was secured. “We should have dropped off Connor first.”
“You’re sure he will be safe at the day care?” Forrest asked as he had the first time.
She smiled. “Yes, there’s no way Bob McCauley would let anything happen to him.”
“Bob McCauley?” The name sounded vaguely familiar to him but not as a day care owner. “Didn’t he play professional football?”
She smiled. “Yes, he did. So you know that nobody would try anything with Bob protecting Connor.”
Even though Forrest recognized the name, he didn’t know the man, so he wanted to talk to him before determining if he trusted Connor in his care. Rae hadn’t wanted to be late for work, though, so she’d asked to be dropped off first. He also wanted to make sure she would be safe before he left her, so he parked her SUV and insisted on following her up to her office, while carrying the handle of the carrier with the sleeping baby over his arm.
An odd chill swept over him, despite the heat of the Texas sun bearing down on them already. He glanced around the lot, looking for someone watching them, and his free hand moved toward his holster. Had someone followed them from the house? Or had the person been waiting here, at her work, for Rae’s arrival?
The morning sun glinting off all of the vehicles’ tinted windows made it impossible to see inside, to see if anyone was inside, watching them. But that sensation prickling Forrest’s skin and raising the short hairs on the nape of his neck confirmed to him that someone was there.
Maybe not the person who’d left the threat for Rae, but someone.
He tightened his grip on the baby carrier and stepped closer to her. Rae’s body tensed as he did. Did she feel it, too? Had last night affected her like it had him?
She’d been acting all morning like it hadn’t happened, though.
Maybe that was why he kept wondering if he’d only dreamed it—because he seemed to be the only one who remembered it. Or wanted to remember it.
She hastened her step as if trying to create some distance between them. But he lengthened his stride and, despite his limp, managed to keep close—for her protection. But she didn’t look as if she felt safe.
Hell, she wouldn’t look at him at all. She pushed open the door to the foyer and rushed toward the bank of elevators. When the doors to one of the elevator cars opened, she stepped inside and hurriedly pressed a button as if she was trying to escape him. He—and Connor—joined her before the doors closed. Despite already pushing the button for her floor, she kept staring at the panel as if she preferred looking at it to looking at him.
Since they’d awakened that morning, she really hadn’t looked at him, as if she couldn’t bear to face him. Or face what they’d done?
Did she regret making love with him? Had it only been a moment of weakness—of vulnerability—for her?
Guilt settled heavily onto his shoulders that he’d taken advantage of that vulnerability, of her fear. Sure, she’d insisted that wasn’t the case, that she’d really wanted him.
And that had seemed true with the way she’d touched him, the way she’d kissed him, the way she’d
cried out with pleasure when she...
Now heat rushed to his face and suffused the rest of his body. He drew in a shaky breath to settle himself, to control the urge for him to lean closer to her and press his lips to hers. To remind her of the heat of the desire between them, the passion.
As he began to bend toward her, though, the elevator lurched to a stop and the bell dinged. The doors slid open, and she stepped out of the car. Only then did she turn back to face him. “You don’t have to come any farther,” she told him. “I’m on my floor. I’m safe.”
As if the matter was settled, she crouched down to peer into the carrier at her baby. “Be good,” she told the sleeping infant.
Love glowed on her beautiful face, warming her brown eyes. She loved her son so much that it radiated from her. Then she lifted her gaze to Forrest and the warmth left her eyes as her guard went back up. “Please make sure he gets safely to day care.”
“I will,” he promised. “I’ll protect him.” Or die trying.
Her lips tugged down at the corners. “I warned you about making promises you can’t keep.”
“I will keep this one,” he vowed. “I will.”
She sighed and stepped back, and the doors began to close. A sense of panic rushed over him, and he slapped his hand against them, holding them open. “I should make sure you’re safe here,” he said.
Her smile flashed. “I am fine. I can take care of myself.”
She was Bellamy’s age—thirty-five—so she’d been taking care of herself for a while now. So he believed her.
That didn’t make him feel any better, though. Somehow it made him feel worse—like he had personally put her in danger. But all he’d done was find that body in her backyard; someone else had put it there.
Someone she knew?
She pushed his hand back from the door, and his skin tingled even from that slight contact. “Take Connor to day care and get back to your real job,” she told him. “You don’t need to babysit either of us now.”
