Cherry Adair - T-flac 09 (19 page)

From this close she could see the individual hairs on his stubborn chin, and the spiky sweep of his short dark lashes on his cheeks as he looked down at her.

She used both hands to remove his arms from around her waist and stepped back. The hug hadn’t been nearly long enough. But she considered herself lucky to get one at all.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

“Not fair.” Pulling the band from around her ponytail, she snapped it onto her wrist, then ran both hands through her hair. Caleb hesitated a beat before dragging his gaze off her breasts and back to her face. “I had to make a decision. Believe me, it was not a snap judgment. I’m the queen of ponderous decision-making. I took everything into account. Things are complicated. I’m making the right choice.

For all of us.”

“I handle complicated brilliantly. Give me a chance.”

Shaking her head, she wrapped her arms around her middle to prevent them from going around Caleb’s neck. He looked larger than life. More vital. More virile. More
male
than her memories had painted him.

He stepped forward. “Can you feel him in here?” He nudged her folded arms out of the way and placed a gentle hand on her belly. He slid the hem of her top out of the way with his thumb, then spread his fingers wide over her tummy. The heat of his palm radiated through her, warming her soul.

He stared down at his hand over her as if he had X-ray vision. “How big is he?” His voice was hushed.

He was relentless. And charming, and sexy and—
Steel yourself. Get a grip,
she warned herself.
It’s
not all about me. I’m the only one here with all the facts. I have to think for all three of us.

Caleb stroked her tummy as if he were communicating with the little life under his fingertips. The back of her throat went dry, and her eyes misted again. Damn these hormones. “I went to the library—about three inches.” She shouldn’t have read about the growth of their child. It had made the baby real. Made what she had to do overwhelmingly awful. Her throat hurt as she swallowed. “He can move around. He has little e-ears. I saw the ultrasound—He looks like a little bean—

“Oh, God, Caleb—” She shouldn’t have said he. Or she. It
had
to be an it.

He pulled her tightly into his arms, and she let him hold her there. Was it so wrong to claim a moment of solace before her life really went to hell?

“Shh. Don’t cry, sweetheart, don’t cry.” He rocked her gently. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

No. It wasn’t. “We don’t even
know
each other.”

“We’ll learn everything there is to know on our honeymoon, how’s that?”

Not everything,she thought with a resurgence of fear.

“Enough to give Bean two parents who will love him.”

Heather choked back a weepy laugh, slipping her arms beneath his jacket to circle his waist. She fisted the soft fabric of his T-shirt in both hands at the small of his back and pressed her face to the hard plane of his chest. The tears came in a flood, no matter how hard she tried to stem the flow. Who knew that Caleb would say all of the right things? And could she blame him if there was a little bit of strain to his words?

“I’m s-sorry—I’m—”
Sorry for being pregnant. Sorry for crying. Sorry for not being able to stop.

Sorry my life is so totally screwed up and out of control. Sorry that I think I’m in love with you
and in a minute I’m going to have to make you leave.

Caleb lifted her face, forcing her to meet his intense gaze. “There’s not a damn thing to be sorry about.”

He wiped her cheek with his thumb. “You didn’t do this alone. We made this baby together. A miracle, in the grand scheme of things.” He bent his head and traced her wet cheek with his mouth. “We’re going to have a baby.
Incredible.
”

Damn it. Biting down on the corner of her bottom lip to stop her mouth from trembling, she asked,

“You’re
p-pleased
?”

He brought both hands up to frame her face, using both thumbs to brush the tears from her cheeks.

“Yeah. Damn. I am.” He paused and said it again slowly. “I. Am.”

She watched as the same “oh shit!” look she’d been wearing lately crossed his features. “I know.” A
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

laugh escaped between her tears. “It’s crazy. Lord, it still hits me like that sometimes, out of the blue, what it would be like.” Her laughter faded as she remembered why she couldn’t live her dream. She stepped back, but not out of the circle of his arms.

She glanced around the small apartment. “I don’t have two chairs, but you can sit there, and I’ll—”

Rolling her lower lip between her teeth, she asked softly, “What do
you
want, Caleb? Not what you think
I
want, but what do you genuinely see happening with us?”

“I want to get married, and do the right thing by our son. We care enough about each other and Baby Bean in here”—he was back to stroking her belly—“to make this work.” He kissed the side of her neck, and she bent her head to give him better access. “
That’s
what I see.”

Oh, God—when he kissed that spot on her neck her insides did the happy dance and her brain went muzzy. “I can’t think when you do that.”

“That’s the object of the exercise. Say yes.”

Say no.Be resolute, she warned herself—but that little voice became fainter and fainter as he kissed the curve between shoulder and neck.
Just. Say. N—
Her lips formed the word, but she couldn’t force herself to say it again.

She huffed out a breath. She wanted this. Wanted
him.
Wanted with every fiber of her being for this thing between them to work. She drew in a ragged breath. Held it. Then let it out.

“Before I answer, there are some things I have to tell you.”
Shut up! Oh, Lord,
she thought, horrified that her body and brain weren’t in sync,
just shut up.

Don’tdrag Caleb into this. Don’t let
your
needs, wants, hopes—
desire
for this man cloud the reality.

“The only thing you have to tell me is ‘yes.’”

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

What she had to do, damn it, was
think.
Think for all three of them, she reminded herself firmly. Not just herself. But Caleb. And the baby. And she couldn’t do that when Caleb was touching her.

She pushed out of his arms. “Don’t touch me for a minute, okay? I don’t even know where to start.”

To his credit Caleb let her go immediately. She could tell he didn’t like it, but he stuffed his hands into his pants pockets and stood there, his expression guarded. “Anywhere.”

She bit her lower lip. Her father used to stand looking at her in loving exasperation, just as Caleb was doing now. He’d stick his hands—very elegantly of course—into his pockets, and jiggle his change, which used to drive her nuts. Now she’d do just about anything to hear that annoying sound again.

Where are you, Daddy?she wondered achingly.
When will this be over?

How much was just enough? She didn’t want to give Caleb information that, if it fell into the wrong hands, could get him as well as her father
killed.
And he sure as heck didn’t need to know that it was her own father who’d embroiled her in this mess in the first place. No matter what he’d done, he was still her father, and as much as she hated him, Heather also loved him. She couldn’t believe that she’d lived her entire life in ignorance about his line of work, and she hated him for lying to her and her mother for most of her life. She hated him for knowingly bringing vicious criminals into their home.

And she hated him for killing her mother. Accident or murder, her mother was just as dead. At his hands.

But that hatred was mixed with an entire lifetime of
loving
him. The two emotions were tightly intertwined inside her. Her feelings for her father were hard to define into clear-cut black or white. But love him or hate him, he was still her father.

The two of them had come up with a story. And she’d stick to it. As far as anyone knew, they’d had a falling out last year and had been estranged ever since. They’d gone their separate ways.

The truth was, Heather genuinely
didn’t
know where he was. And she was scared to death that they might have found and killed him without her even knowing it.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

God, Daddy,Heather thought.
How could you have been so damned stupid? And how could
I
have
been so freaking oblivious?
There was more she didn’t know about what her father had done, and to whom. But even if she knew all the facts, she wasn’t going to give even
Caleb
full disclosure. They weren’t her secrets to reveal. And she’d given her father her word. Complete secrecy was the only way they could hope to stay alive long enough for her father to figure this out. Until then, it was safer to keep up the pretense of a rift in the family.

Not such a difficult pretense really. She wasn’t sure she was ready to see her father yet. Not when she was still so furious with him.

But for a chance at happiness, could she risk at least some of the truth? Caleb’s strength let her think he could handle it.

She braced her hands on the window, looking out at the street. She was aware of Caleb’s wavy image in the pane of glass as he stood behind her. “Someone’s trying to kidnap me. Possibly kill me.”

To his credit, he didn’t laugh or tell her she was crazy. He simply waited for her to continue. “I’ve been on the run for almost a year.”

“Who? Why?”

Heather turned and met his unfathomable gaze without flinching. “I don’t know.”

“All right. Wow. You’ve dropped a couple of bombs on me, sweetheart, you know that? Come and sit down, tell me what’s going on.” He sat on the side of the bed and held out his hand.

She shook her head, pulling up the single chair from the table, choosing to put some distance between them instead.

“You’re a little pale. Want to lie down?”

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

If he had given her a little warning she would have had time to put on a little blush. Gee, maybe brush her hair before her life took another left turn. “I’m okay.” About a solar system away from okay, but that wasn’t his problem. That couldn’t be his problem. Having nothing to do with her hands, she sat on them.

“Tell me about these attempts. How can you
not
know who’s terrorizing you? Or why?”

“First of all, let me explain that my father is a wealthy man. An
extremely
wealthy man. Kidnapping me has
always
been a possibility. I’m his only child, and our family is high profile. More so in Europe than here, but if anyone put Hannah Smith in context with Brian Shaw they’d recognize me immediately. My name is Heather Shaw, not Hannah Smith.”

“I don’t give a damn if your name is Mata Hari. And I don’t give a damn, other than how it relates to
you,
who or what your father is. Changing your name if you’re keeping a low profile makes sense—Brian Shaw? The international banker?”

“Yes.” International
terrorist
banker, Heather thought bitterly. A small detail about her father’s business dealings that he had managed to kept secret from her for most of her life, and from her mother for almost all of their marriage. It was her mother’s discovery that had precipitated all of this.

Heather couldn’t figure out which emotion she felt more strongly at any given time. Betrayal. Anger.

Fear. Or all three. And frequently in the last year, a powerful hatred too.

All churned up with the love she had for a man whom she’d always believed was her hero.

She’d learned pretty damned fast that there was no such thing. Her fault, she supposed, for believing in a man with feet of clay. He’d taken the two people she’d loved most in the world away from her. Her mother. And himself. The hole his actions had left in her heart was too vast to describe. She brought her bloodless hands into her lap, clasping them tightly. Briefly she squeezed her eyes shut. Remembering—

seeing
—

“Heather?”

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

“Sorry. I’m okay. It’s been well publicized, on purpose of course, that no ransom demands will be met, not for my father’s key employees, and not for his family. But the kidnappers might not have gotten that memo,” she said, forcing a lightness to her voice that she didn’t feel.

“My father warned me years ago that if I was ever kidnapped he, or his estate, wouldn’t give in to extortion. He’d refuse to pay the ransom. I believe him. Besides the fact that he’s so cheap he squeaks, we’ve never gotten along. And frankly, I don’t think he’d notice or give a damn if someone
did
kidnap me. Or worse.”

It was such an enormous lie she almost expected her nose to grow. Her father would go to the ends of the earth and beyond to protect her. Or would he?

The entire foundation of her life had been built on quicksand. She didn’t know who to trust. Who to believe.
What
to believe anymore.

“So an attempt was made to abduct you. When? Where? And where the fuck were your bodyguards?”

“Mike was killed in Barcelona a month after we left Paris last March. He’d gone to get the car while Seth and I waited—remote-controlled car bomb.” Amazing that she could utter the horrific words so calmly. She couldn’t control the shudder, and rubbed her bare arms briskly as she remembered the force of the percussion and the unbelievable heat of the explosion as she was thrown back by the blast.

“Four men grabbed me. Tried to hustle me into a van. Seth managed to kill three of them and wounded the fourth. He was killed three weeks later in San Cristóbal.”