Agent to the Rescue (Special Agents At The Alter Book 3) (11 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Dalton had figured there was a fiancé—either dead or alive and trying to kill her. He hadn’t figured that she had a baby. How could she have forgotten a baby?

“I’ll explain...what I remember,” Elizabeth promised, “after I get her down for her nap.” She carried the little girl toward a wide oak staircase leading to the second story.

He nearly reached out to stop her. But a gray-haired woman stepped from behind the curly-haired man and hurried after her. “Miss Elizabeth, I was so worried about you. When you didn’t call to check on her, I knew I should have called the police—”

And Dalton stopped that woman instead, pulling her up short with a hand on her arm before she could climb the stairs, too. Elizabeth stared down at the woman with the same expression with which she’d looked at her fiancé—as if she didn’t remember her.

“Why didn’t you call the police?” he asked. “Why didn’t you report her missing?”

“Who are you?” the woman asked, her dark eyes narrowing with suspicion.

“FBI Special Agent Reyes,” he introduced himself.

The woman gasped. “Is she still in danger?”

He nodded. “The person who attacked her has not been caught. So, yes, she’s still in danger.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have come here, Elizabeth,” the curly-haired man told her.

She didn’t even stop—just kept carrying the now-giggling toddler up the stairs.

“She couldn’t stay away from the baby,” the woman admonished him.

“Not even for little Lizzie’s safety?” the man asked.

“Nobody followed us here,” Dalton assured him. “I will make sure they stay safe. But I need to know what the hell’s going on.”

“She really has amnesia?” the man asked.

He nodded. “Yes, but her memory is beginning to return. She remembered her friends—Kenneth and Patricia. She said they live here.”

A little cry slipped through the woman’s lips, and the man shook his head. “Not anymore. Kenny and Patricia are dead.”

Had Elizabeth remembered that yet?

“What happened to them?” he asked, wondering if it was somehow related to what had happened to her. “Were they murdered?”

The woman jerked her head in a quick nod. “Yes, yes...that is what Elizabeth believes.”

The man pushed a hand through his curly hair. “It was a tragedy,” he said. “Kenny was my brother, and I just can’t understand what happened.”

“What happened?” Dalton asked again.

“It was a murder-suicide,” the man replied. “He killed her and then himself.”

The woman began to cry, tears flowing down her face. “Kenneth loved her. He wouldn’t have.”

“I think that’s why he did,” the man said. “So that he would never lose her.”

“Patricia wouldn’t have left him.”

“Why don’t you go check on Elizabeth and the baby,” he suggested, as if annoyed with the woman’s interruptions.

She hesitated, either waiting or maybe hoping for Dalton to stop her again, before she climbed the stairs to wherever Elizabeth had gone.

“Marta and Elizabeth don’t want to accept it,” he said. “But my brother was an insanely jealous man. He was gone a lot for business. And he’d become certain that Patricia was having an affair.”

Dalton was assigned to the organized crime division. He didn’t understand crimes of passion—or at least he hadn’t until he had been tempted to kill Tom Wilson for putting Elizabeth in danger. “You’re his brother?”

“Gregory Cunningham,” the man finally introduced himself.

“Did he tell you who he thought the other man was?”

Gregory glanced up toward that ornate staircase, as if wondering if Elizabeth was listening. “Tom Wilson.”

“Elizabeth’s fiancé?”

“The man had an obvious crush on Patricia.”

Dalton’s brow furrowed. “But he’s engaged to Elizabeth...” No man engaged to her had any reason to look at another woman.

Gregory sighed. “And Elizabeth is...smart and driven. But Patricia...”

“Patricia was magic,” Elizabeth said as she descended the stairs to join them. “She was beautiful and loving and loyal. It didn’t matter who had a crush on her...”

It didn’t appear to matter to her that Tom Wilson might have.

“...she would have never cheated on Kenneth,” she said. “And he knew that. He wouldn’t have hurt her or himself.”

Gregory sighed. “Elizabeth, the police investigated. They ruled it a murder-suicide. You have to accept that. You have to accept that they’re gone.”

She shook her head, and like Marta, tears streamed down her face. She had definitely remembered that her friends were gone, and she was suffering all over again.

“I’ll call the investigating officer,” Dalton offered, because her tears had his gut tightening with dread and his own heart aching with her pain. “I’ll just double check.”

The guy sighed. “Thank you, Agent Reyes, and thank you for saving Elizabeth. I don’t know how little Lizzie could have handled losing another person in her life.”

“She’s not going to lose me,” Elizabeth insisted. “I’m going to be here for her—just like I promised Patricia and Kenneth that I would be.” An earsplitting cry drew away her attention, and she hurried back upstairs to the upset child.

The man sighed again. “That should have proved to her that their deaths were no accident or murder,” he said. “They knew they weren’t going to be around to raise their little girl, so they made Elizabeth make those promises.”

It made sense in that “dying man getting his house in order” way. But how could Patricia have known what Kenneth had planned for them?

“They made Elizabeth her guardian?” He watched the man’s face for any sign of resentment or anger.

Gregory Cunningham just nodded. “Elizabeth was their best friend. They named their little girl for her.” He chuckled. “They always said Lizzie was more like her than either of them—as if the baby actually was her biological child.”

He picked his jacket from one of a row of hooks by the door. The hooks were actually crystal doorknobs, though. “I am just a doting uncle.”

“You don’t live here?”

He shook his head. “Not in this house. But I live in the area, and I work in Grand Rapids.”

“So I’ll be able to find you if I have more questions?”

The man nodded. “Thank you, Agent Reyes, for saving Elizabeth,” he said again. “That little girl can’t lose anyone else she loves.”

Dalton didn’t want to lose Elizabeth, either.

* * *

E
LIZABETH
’
S
ARM
HAD
grown numb, but she didn’t want to move the little girl. She wanted to hold on to her forever. “I’m sorry,” she murmured to the sleeping child.

How could she have forgotten her—even for a moment? How could she have forgotten her promise to Lizzie’s parents?

“I’m sorry,” a deep voice murmured.

She raised her gaze from the curly-haired child to the man standing in the doorway to the nursery. He was so ruggedly handsome—with his dark hair and muscular body. But his handsome face was etched in a slight grimace. Maybe the so-very-pink princess room that Patricia had created for her daughter made him uncomfortable.

Or maybe it was whatever he’d learned about the investigation into Kenneth’s and Patricia’s deaths.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

And she grimaced and shook her head. “No...”

“I talked to the investigating officer,” he said. “He’s certain that it was what it looked like...”

Murder-suicide.

“I don’t care what it looked like,” she said. “It wasn’t what happened.”

She had been watching Lizzie that weekend a few months ago so that Kenneth and Patricia could sneak away for a romantic getaway. But then she’d gotten the call that their bodies had been found in their little lakeside cabin.

She shuddered even now, remembering it, and the child stirred against her. She didn’t want to wake her. Marta said that she’d slept very little while Elizabeth had been gone. She had left her willingly to return to Chicago to handle a work crisis, but then she hadn’t returned.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured to the baby.

“I asked Jared Bell to review the case, too,” he said.

But she heard it in his voice—the belief that Jared would be wasting his time. So why had Dalton asked him to look into it? Just to humor her?

She didn’t care what his motivation was, though. At least someone else would look into what had happened. Maybe they would finally discover the truth.

“Thank you,” she said.

His head moved in a slight nod. He looked tired, but then, they hadn’t slept that much the night before.

Her face heated as she remembered why. She had been insatiable. And she still wanted him.

“Do you want to lay her down in her bed?” Dalton asked.

She had been sitting with baby Lizzie for hours—so long that the sky had grown dark outside the windows. “My arm fell asleep,” she admitted.

“You let the nanny leave,” he said.

She nodded. “Marta needed a break.” Like Elizabeth, the nanny had relived the tragic loss of Kenneth and Patricia. She had worked for the couple since the baby had been born two years ago, and she had loved them like family. “She’ll be back in the morning.”

“You should get some sleep,” he said. “You must be exhausted.” He stepped forward so that he stood over the rocking chair in which she sat with the child.

“Because of last night?” she asked.

A spark flashed in his dark eyes. “Because of today,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot.” He touched her, accidentally, as he lifted the little girl from her arms.

But her skin heated, and desire flashed through her. He gently cradled the child in his muscular arms and carried her toward her crib as if he’d been carrying a baby for years. He looked more comfortable than she had been—in those early days when she had first been granted guardianship of the little girl based on Kenneth and Patricia’s will.

“Have all your memories returned?” he asked.

She shrugged, and her shoulder burned as the numbness left her sleeping arm. “I don’t know. I still feel like I’m trying to read a book with a lot of pages missing.”

“At least some of it’s returning,” he said.

She sighed. “The part I didn’t want to remember,” she admitted as she joined him by the crib. “Maybe I forgot on purpose.”

“You had a concussion,” he reminded her. “I don’t think you had a choice.”

Guilt clutched at her as she stared down at the sleeping child. “I feel horrible that I forgot about her.” The child blurred as tears filled her eyes. “She deserves better than me as a guardian. She deserves her mother and father.”

“Forgetting that they’re dead won’t bring them back,” Dalton said. He slid his arm around her and drew her tightly against him.

Weary and grateful for his support, she leaned heavily on him. “I know.”

“Even if Jared finds out that you’re right about their deaths, it won’t bring them back.”

“But it’ll clear their names,” she said. “It’ll take the taint off their love, of their memory for their daughter.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “They were right,” he said, “to ask you to raise their daughter. You’re the perfect person. You’re just pretty much perfect.”

How could he think that—after getting a glimpse into her real life? She laughed. “You must be exhausted,” she teased him. “You’re getting delusional.”

He chuckled.

And the child stirred at the unfamiliar sound. Kenneth hadn’t had a deep voice like Dalton’s. Neither did his brother. And she couldn’t remember if Tom had ever spent much time around the little girl.

So he wouldn’t wake baby Lizzie, she took Dalton’s hand and tugged him from the room. Then she closed the door.

“Her baby monitor is wired into intercoms,” she explained. “There’s one in the kitchen.” So she could have brought him downstairs. But it was late and she wasn’t hungry...for food. “And in the master bedroom...”

She opened the double doors to the corner room. “I didn’t think I would be able to sleep in here,” she admitted as she stepped inside the large, airy room with its vaulted ceiling, lightly stained hardwood floors and pale blue walls. “But I had to because of the intercom.”

She shook her head in amazement that she had automatically felt so comfortable in this room. She remembered that—she remembered everything about Kenneth and Patricia and baby Lizzie. “And somehow it felt right...”

And for some reason, it felt right that Dalton joined her in that room and closed the doors behind him.

“Like last night,” she said, reaching for his hand to pull him farther into the room with her. “Last night felt right.”

It was all she managed to say before he pulled her to him again and covered her mouth with his. He was hungry, too; his hunger was in the urgency of his kiss and in his hands as they tugged off her clothes.

She was every bit as anxious, tearing at his buttons and snaps until he was naked with her. But as he had the night before, he put his holster and gun within easy reach of the bed—on one of the end tables. Then he laid her on that feather-soft mattress beneath the wispy canopy. But within seconds he joined her. Then their bodies joined.

She arched up, ready and eager for him, and took him deeply inside her. She clung to him as if he was her anchor in the storm of emotions as her memories returned—along with the danger.

But Dalton brought out more emotions in her, emotions she never remembered feeling before, even though she wore another man’s ring. She was falling in love with Special Agent Dalton Reyes. She opened her mouth to tell him, but his lips covered hers before she could utter a word.

Maybe that was for the best. He was unlikely to believe her anyway. He would probably just think that she was grateful that he kept saving her life. And she was grateful.

But she was so much more than grateful. She met each of his thrusts. And she kissed him back with all the passion he aroused in her. She would show him how much she loved him—even though she dare not tell him yet.

She would wait until the killer was caught—as Dalton had promised. And her memory had returned. Then she would tell him—if he was still around. Because once the case was closed, Dalton would have no reason to protect her any longer. If he moved on to the next case, then she would be grateful that she hadn’t shared her feelings with him.